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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and 
Literature 






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THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 


CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
ZLonvon:; FETTER LANE, E.C. 
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER 





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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
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https://archive.org/details/comingofevolutio0O0judd_0 





RS THE COMING 
OF EVOLUTION 


THE STORY OF A GREAT 
REVOLUTION IN SCIENCE 


byes 
JOHN W. JUDD 
C.B. LL, Ds Rew. 
Formerly Professor of Geology and 


f Dean of the Royal College of Science § 


Cambridge : 


at the University Press 





First Edition 1910 
Reprinted 1911 


With the exception of the coat of arms at 
the foot, the design on the title page is a 
reproduction of one used by the earliest known 
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. PAGE 
I, Introductory . . ; : : ‘ ° 1 
II. Origin of the Idea of Evolution 5 

III. The Development of the Idea of Evolution to the 

Inorganic World ; : : . 14 
IV. The Triumph of Catastrophism over Evolution 20 
V. The Revolt of ers and rei hers Catastro- 
phism . : . : BA) SR: 
VI. The Principles of Geology . : e : 55 
VII. The Influence of Lyell’s Works 68 
VIII. Early Attempts to establish the Doctrine of Evolu- 
tion for the Organic World : 82 
IX. Darwin and Wallace: The Theory of Natural 
Selection : : : ‘ : YS 
X. The Origin of Species. ; ‘ : : 13 
XI. The Influence of Darwin’s Works . 4 ‘ 136 
XII. The Place of Lyell and Darwin in History . 149 
Notes : . AURA areal re 160 
DOCK Mere he erty 6m Nl pores re) nee ets i LOD 
PLATES 
Charles Darwin : : : : - . Frontispiece 
reroulettescrope .) 0: Ga fe) a tO face p.. 35 
STareeepye ler Free cau ice eee Ro. or tes sya el 


Alfred R. Wallace ° e e * e ° ” +>) 








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CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 


WHEN the history of the Nineteenth Century— 
‘the Wonderful Century,’ as it has, not inaptly, been 
called—comes to be written, a foremost place must 
be assigned to that great movement by which evolu- 
tion has become the dominant factor in scientific 
progress, while its influence has been felt in every 
sphere of human speculation and effort. At the 
beginning of the Century, the few who ventured 
to entertain evolutionary ideas were regarded by 
their scientific contemporaries, as wild visionaries 
or harmless ‘cranks’—by the world at large, as 
ignorant ‘quacks’ or ‘designing atheists.” At the 
end of the Century, evolution had not only become 
the guiding principle of naturalists, but had pro- 
foundly influenced every branch of physical science ; 
at the same time, suggesting new trains of thought 
and permeating the language of philologists, histori- 
ans, sociologists, politicians—and even of theologians. 

How has this revolution in thought—the greatest 
which has occurred in modern times—been brought 


J. E, 1 


2 THE COMING (cn. 


about? What manner of men were they who were 
the leaders in this great movement? What the 
influences that led them to discard the old views and 
adopt new ones? And, under what circumstances 
were they able to produce the works which so 
profoundly affected the opinions of the day? These 
are the questions with which I propose to deal in the 
following pages. 

It has been my own rare good fortune to have 
enjoyed the friendship of all the great leaders in this 
important movement—of Huxley, Hooker, Scrope, 
Wallace, Lyell and Darwin—and, with some of them, 
I was long on terms of affectionate intimacy. From 
their own lips I have learned of incidents, and 
listened to anecdotes, bearing on the events of 
a memorable past. Would that I could hope to 
bring before my readers, in all their nobility, a vivid 
picture of the characteristics of the men to whom 
science and the world owe so much ! 

For it is not only by their intellectual greatness 
that we are impressed. Every man of science is 
proud, and justly proud, of the grandeur of character, 
the unexampled generosity, the modesty and sim- 
plicity which distinguished these pioneers in a great 
cause. It is unfortunately true, that the votaries of 
science—like the cultivators of art and literature— 
have sometimes so far forgotten their high vocation, 
as to have been more careful about the priority 


1] OF EVOLUTION 3 


of their personal claims than of the purity of their 
own motives—they have sometimes, it must be sadly 
admitted, allowed self-interest to obscure the interests 
of science. But in the story we have to relate there 
are no ‘regrettable incidents’ to be deplored ; never 
has there occurred any event that marred the harmony 
in this band of fellow-workers, striving towards a 
great ideal. So noble, indeed, was the great central 
figure—Charles Darwin—that his senior Lyell and 
all his juniors were bound to him by the strongest 
ties of admiration, respect and affection ; while he, 
in his graceful modesty, thought more of them than 
of himself, of the results of their labours rather than 
of his own great achievement. 

It is not, as sometimes suggested, the striking out 
of new ideas which is of the greatest importance in 
the history of science, but rather the accumulation 
of observations and experiments, the reasonings 
based upon these, and the writings in which facts 
and reasonings are presented to the world—by which 
a merely suggestive hypothesis becomes a vivifying 
theory—that really count in making history. 

Talking with Matthew Arnold in 1871, he laugh- 
ingly remarked to me ‘I cannot understand why you 
scientific people make such a fuss about Darwin. 
Why it’s all in Lucretius!’ On my replying, ‘ Yes! 
Lucretius guessed what Darwin proved,’ he mischiev- 
ously rejoined ‘Ah! that only shows how much 

[2 


4 THE COMING OF EVOLUTION [cH 1 


greater Lucretius really was,—for he divined a truth, 
which Darwin spent a life of labour in groping for.’ 

Mr Alfred Russel Wallace has so well and clearly 
set forth the essential difference between the points 
of view of the cultivators of literature and science 
in this matter, that I cannot do better than to quote 
his words. They are as follows :— 

‘IJ have long since come to see that no one deserves either 
praise or blame for the ideas that come to him, but only for the 
actions resulting therefrom. Ideas and beliefs are certainly not 
voluntary acts. They come to us—we hardly know how or 
whence, and once they have got possession of us we cannot reject 
them or change them at will. It is for the common good that the 
promulgation of ideas should be free—uninfiuenced by either 
praise or blame, reward or punishment.’ 

‘But the actions which result from our ideas may properly be so 
treated, because it is only by patient thought and work that new 
ideas, if good and true, become adopted and utilized; while, 
if untrue or if not adequately presented to the world, they are 
rejected or forgotten!’* 

Ideas of Evolution, both in the Organic and the 
Inorganic world, existed but remained barren for 
thousands of years. Yet by the labours of a band 
of workers in last century, these ideas, which were 
but the dreams of poets and the guesses of philo- 
sophers, came to be the accepted creed of working 
naturalists, while they have profoundly affected 
thought and language in every branch of human 
enterprise. 

* For References see the end of the volume, 


CHAPTER II 
ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF EVOLUTION 


In all ages, and in all parts of the world, we find 
that primitive man has delighted in speculating on 
the birth of the world in which he lives, on the origin 
of the living things that surround him, and especially 
on the beginnings of the race of beings to which he 
himself belongs. In a recent very interesting essay’, 
the author of Zhe Golden Bough has collected, from 
the records of tradition, history and travel, a valuable 
mass of evidence concerning the legends which have 
grown out of these speculations. Myths of this kind 
would appear to fall into two categories, each of 
which may not improbably be associated with the 
different pursuits followed by the uncivilised races 
of mankind. 

Tillers of the soil, impressed as they must have 
been by the great annual miracle of the outburst of 
vegetable life as spring returns, naturally adopted 
one of these lines of speculation. From the dead, 


6 THE COMING [CH. 


bare ground they witnessed the upspringing of all 
the wondrous beauty of the plant-world, and, in their 
ignorance of the chemistry of vegetable life, they 
imagined that the herbs, shrubs and trees are all 
alike built up out of the materials contained in the 
soil from which they grow. The recognition of the 
fact that animals feed on plants, or on one another, 
led to the obvious conclusion that the ultimate 
materials of animal, as well as of vegetable, structures 
were to be sought for in the soil. And this view was 
confirmed by the fact that, when life ceases in plants 
or animals, all alike are reduced to ‘dust’ and again 
become a part of the soil—returning ‘ earth to earth.’ 
In groping therefore for an explanation of the origin 
of living things, what could be more natural than the 
supposition that the first plants and animals—like 
those now surrounding us—were made and fashioned 
from the soil, dust or earth—all had been ‘clay in 
the hands of a potter.’ The widely diffused notion 
that man himself must have been moulded out of red 
clay is probably accounted for by the colour of our 
internal organs. 

Thus originated a large class of legendary stories, 
many of them of a very grotesque character. Even 
in many mediaeval sculptures, in this country and on 
the continent, the Deity is represented as moulding 
with his hands the semblance of a human figure out 
of a shapeless lump of clay. 


11] OF EVOLUTION 7 


But among the primitive hunters and herdsmen 
a very different line of speculation appears to have 
originated, for by their occupations they were con- 
tinually brought into contact with an entirely different 
class of phenomena. They could not but notice that 
the creatures which they hunted or tended, and slew, 
presented marked resemblances to themselves—in 
their structures, their functions, their diseases, their 
dispositions, and their habits. When dogs and horses 
became the servants and companions of men, and 
when various beasts and birds came to be kept as 
pets, the mental and even the moral processes 
characterising the intelligence of these animals must 
have been seen by their masters to be identical in 
kind with those of their own minds. Do we not even 
at the present day compare human characteristics 
with those of animals, the courage of the lion, the 
cunning of the fox, the fidelity of the dog, and the 
parental affection of the bird? And the men, who 
depended for their very existence on studying the 
ways of various animals, could not have been less 
impressed by these qualities than are we. 

Mr Frazer has shown how, from such considera- 
tions, the legends concerning the relations of certain 
tribes of men with particular species of animals have 
arisen, and thus the cults of ‘sacred animals’ and of 
‘totemism’ have been gradually developed. From 
comparisons of human courage, sagacity, swiftness, 


8 THE COMING [CH. 


strength or perseverance, with similar qualities dis- 
played by certain animals, it was an easy transition 
to the idea that such characteristics were derived by 
inheritance. 

In the absence of any exact knowledge of anatomy 
and physiology, the resemblances of animals to 
themselves would quite outbulk the differences in 
the eyes of primitive men, and the idea of close 
relationship in blood does not appear to have been 
regarded with distaste. In their origin and in their 
destiny, no distinction was drawn between man and 
what we now designate as the ‘lower’ animals. 
Primitive man not only feels no repugnance to such 
kinship :-— 

‘But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company,’ 


It should perhaps be remembered, too, that, in 
the breeding of domestic animals, the great facts of 
heredity and variation could not fail to have been 
noticed, and must have given rise to reflection and 
speculation. The selection of the best animals for 
breeding purposes, and the consequent improvement 
of their stock, may well have suggested the transmu- 
tation of one kind of animal into a different kind, 
just as the crossing of different kinds of animals 
seems to have suggested the possible existence of 
centaurs, griffins and other monstrous forms. 


11] OF EVOLUTION 9 


How early the principles of variation and heredity, 
and even the possibility of improving breeds by 
selection, must have been appreciated by early men 
is illustrated by the old story of the way in which the 
wily Jacob made an attempt—however futile were the 
means he adopted—to cheat his employer Laban‘. 

Yet, in spite of observed tendencies to variation 
among animals and plants, early man must have been 
convinced of the existence of distinct kinds (‘species’) 
in both the vegetable and animal worlds; he recog- 
nised that plants of definite kinds yielded particular 
fruits, and that different kinds of animals did not 
breed promiscuously with one another, but that, 
pairing each with its own kind, all gave rise to like 
offspring, and thus arose the idea of distinct ‘species’ 
of plants and animals. 

It must be remembered, however, that for a long 
time ‘the world’ was believed to be limited to a few 
districts surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean, and 
the kinds or ‘species’ of animals and plants were 
supposed to number a few scores or at most hundreds. 
This being the case, the sudden stocking of ‘the 
world’ with its complement of animals and plants 
would be thought a comparatively simple operation, 
and the violent destruction of the whole a scarcely 
serious result. Even the possibility of the preserva- 
tion of pairs of all the different species, in a ship of 
moderate dimensions, was one that was easily enter- 


10 THE COMING [cH. 


tained and was not calculated to awaken either sur- 
prise or incredulity. 

But how different is the problem as it now presents 
itself to us! In the year 1900 Professor 8. H. Vines 
of Oxford estimated that the number of ‘species’ of 
plants that have been described could be little short 
of 200,000, and that future studies, especially of the 
lower microscopic forms, would probably bring that 
number up to 300,0005% Last year, Mr A. E. Shipley 
of Cambridge, basing his estimate on the earlier one 
of Dr Giinther, came to the conclusion that the number 
of described animals must also exceed 300,000% On 
the lowest estimate then we must place the number 
of known species of plants and animals, living on the 
globe, as 600,000! And if we consider the numbers 
of new forms of plants and animals that every year 
are being described by naturalists—about 1500 plants 
and 1200 animals—if we take into account the inac- 
cessible or as yet unvisited portions of the earth’s 
surface, the very imperfectly known depths of the sea, 
and, in addition to these, the almost infinite varieties 
of minute and microscopic forms, | think every com- 
petent judge would consider a million as_ being 
probably an estimate below, rather than above, the 
number of ‘species’ now existing on the earth ! 

While some of these species are very widely 
distributed over the earth’s surface, or in'the waters 
of the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers, there are others 


11] OF EVOLUTION 1 


which are as strikingly limited in their range. Many 
of the myriad forms of insect-life pass their whole 
existence, and are dependent for food, on a particular 
species of plant. Not a few animals and plants are 
parasitical, and can only live in the interior or on the 
outside of other plants and animals. 

It will be seen from these considerations that in 
attempting to decide between the two hypotheses of 
the origin of species—the only ones ever suggested— 
namely the fashioning of them out of dead matter, or 
their descent with modification from pre-existing 
forms, we are dealing with a problem of much greater 
complexity than could possibly have been imagined 
by the early speculators on the subject. 

The two strongly contrasted hypotheses to which 
we have referred are often spoken of as ‘creation’ 
and ‘evolution.’ But this is an altogether illegitimate 
use of these terms. By whatever method species of 
plants or animals come into existence, they may be 
rightly said to be ‘created.’ We speak of the 
existing plants and animals as having been created, 
although we well know them to have been ‘evolved’ 
from seeds, eggs and other ‘germs ’—and indeed from 
those minute and seemingly simple structures known 
as ‘cells. Lyell and Darwin, as we shall presently 
see, though they were firmly convinced that species 
of plants and animals were slowly developed and not 
suddenly manufactured, wrote constantly and correctly 
of the ‘creation’ of new forms of life. 


12 THE COMING [ CH. 


The idea of ‘descent with modification, derived 
from the early speculations of hunters and herdsmen, 
is really a much nobler and more beautiful conception 
of ‘creation’ than that of the ‘fashioning out of 
clay, which commended itself to the primitive agri- 
culturalists. 

Lyell writing to his friend John Herschel, who 
like himself believed in the derivation of new species 
from pre-existing ones by the action of secondary 
causes, wrote in 1836 :— 


‘When I first came to the notion,...of a succession of 
extinction of species, and creation of new ones, going on per- 
petually now, and through an indefinite period of the past, and to 
continue for ages to come, all in accommodation to the changes 
which must continue in the inanimate and habitable earth, the 
idea struck me as the grandest which I had ever conceived, so far 
as regards the attributes of the Presiding Mind’ 


And Darwin concludes his presentment of the 
doctrine of evolution in the Origin of Species in 1859 
with the following sentence :— 


‘There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several 
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few 
forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on 
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning 
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and 
are being, evolved 


Compare with these suggestions the ideas em- 
bodied in the following lines—ideas of which the 


IT] OF EVOLUTION 13 


crudeness cannot be concealed by all the witchery of 
Milton’s immortal verse :— 


‘The Earth obey’d, and straight, 
Op’ning her fertile womb, teem’d at a birth 
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
Limb’d and full grown. Out of the ground up rose 
As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons 
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den ; 
Among the trees they rose, they walk’d ; 
The cattle in the fields and meadows green: 
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks 
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung. 
The grassy clods now calv’d; now half appear’d 
The tawny lion, pawing to get free 
His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds, 
And rampant shakes his brinded mane,’ 


Can anyone doubt for a moment which is the 
grander view of ‘Creation ’—that embodied in 
Darwin's prose, or the one so strikingly pictured in 
Milton’s poetry ? 

We see then that the two ideas of the method of 
creation, dimly perceived by early man, have at last 
found clear and definite expression from these two 
authors—Milton and Darwin. It is a singular coinci- 
dence that these two great exponents of the rival 
hypotheses were both students in the same University 
of Cambridge and indeed resided in the same foun- 
dation—and that not one of the largest of that 
University—namely Christ's College. 


CHAPTER III 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF EVOLUTION TO 
THE INORGANIC WORLD 


WE have seen in the preceding chapter that, with 
respect to the origin of plants and animals—including 
man himself—two very distinct lines of speculation 
have arisen; these two lines of thought may be 
expressed by the terms ‘manufacture ’—literally 
making by hand, and ‘development’ or ‘evolution,’ 
—a gradual unfolding from simpler to more complex 
forms. Now with respect to the znorganic world two 
parallel hypotheses of ‘creation’ have arisen, like 
those relating to organic nature ; but in the former 
case the determining factor in the choice of ideas has 
been, not the avocations of the primitive peoples, but 
the nature of their surroundings. 

The dwellers in the valleys of the Euphrates and 
Tigris could not but be impressed by the great and 
destructive floods to which those regions were subject ; 
and the inhabitants of the shores and islands of the 
Aegean Sea, and of the Italian peninsula, were equally 


oH. 11] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 15 


conversant with the devastations wrought by volcanic 
outbursts and earthquake shocks. As great districts 
were seen to be depopulated by these catastrophies, 
might not some even more violent cataclysm of the 
same kind actually destroy all mankind, with the 
animals and plants, in the comparatively small area 
then known as ‘the world’? The great flood, of 
which all these nations appear to have retained tra- 
ditions, was regarded as only the last of such destruc- 
tive cataclysms; and, in this way, there originated 
the myth of successive destructions of the face of the 
earth, each followed by the creation of new stocks of 
plants and animals. This is the doctrine now known 
as ‘Catastrophism, which we find prevalent in the 
earliest traditions and writings of India, Babylonia, 
Syria and Greece. 

But in ancient Egypt quite another class of 
phenomena was conspicuously presented to the early 
philosophers of the country. Instead of sudden floods 
and terrible displays of volcanic and earthquake 
violence, they witnessed the annual gentle rise and 
overflowings of their grand river, with its beneficent 
heritage of new soil; and they soon learned to 
recognise that Egypt itself—so far as the delta was 
concerned—was ‘the gift of the Nile.’ 

From the contemplation of these phenomena, the 
Egyptian sages were gradually led to entertain the 
idea that all the features of the earth—as they knew 


16 THE COMING [on. 


it—might have been similarly produced through the 
slow and constant action of the causes now seen in 
operation around them. This idea was incorporated 
in a myth, which was suggested by the slow and 
gradual transformation of an egg into a perfect, 
growing organism. The birth of the world was 
pictured as an act of incubation, and male and female 
deities were invented to play the part of parents to 
the infant world. By Pythagoras, who resided for 
more than twenty years in Egypt, these ideas were 
introduced to the Greek philosophers, and from that 
time ‘Catastrophism’ found a rival in the new 
doctrine which we shall see has been designated under 
the names of ‘Continuity,’ ‘ Uniformitarianism’ or 
‘Evolution. How, from the first crude notions of 
evolution, successive thinkers developed more just and 
noble conceptions on the subject, has been admirably 
shown by Professor Osborn in his From the Greeks to 
Darwin and by Mr Clodd in his Pioneers of Evolution. 

Poets, from Empedocles and Lucretius to Goethe 
and Tennyson, have sought in their verses to illustrate 
the beauty of evolutionary ideas ; and philosophers, 
from Aristotle and Strabo to Kant and Herbert 
Spencer, have recognised the principle of evolution 
as harmonising with, and growing out of, the highest 
conceptions of science. Yet it was not till the Nine- 
teenth Century that any serious attempts were made 
to establish the hypothesis of evolution as a definite 


11] OF EVOLUTION 17 


theory, based on sound reasoning from careful obser- 
vation. 

It is true that there were men, in advance of their 
age, who in some cases anticipated to a certain extent 
this work of establishing the doctrine of evolution on 
a firm foundation. Thus in Italy, the earliest home 
of so many sciences, a Carmelite friar, Generelli, 
reasoning on observations made by his compatriots 
Fracastoro and Leonardo da Vinci in the Sixteenth 
Century, Steno and Scilla in the Seventeenth, and 
Lazzaro Moro and Marsilli in the Eighteenth Century, 
laid the foundations of a rational system of geology in 
a work published in 1749 which was characterised 
alike by courage and eloquence. In France, the 
illustrious Nicolas Desmarest, from his study of the 
classical region of the Auvergne, was able to show, in 
1777, how the river valleys of that district had been 
carved out by the rivers that flowin them. Nor were 
there wanting geologists with similar previsions in 
Germany and Switzerland. 

But none of these early exponents of geological 
theory came so near to anticipating the work of the 
Nineteenth Century as did the illustrious James 
Hutton, whose ‘Theory of the Earth, a first sketch 
of which was published in 1785, was a splendid ex- 
position of evolution as applied to the inorganic world. 
Unfortunately, Hutton’s theory was linked to the 
extravagancies of what was known at that day as 


J. E. & 


18 THE COMING (cH. 


‘Vulcanism’ or ‘Plutonism,’ in contradistinction to 
the ‘ Neptunism’ of Werner. Hutton, while rejecting 
the Wernerian notion of “the aqueous precipitation 
of basalt,” maintained the equally fanciful idea that 
the consolidation of all strata—clays, sandstones, 
conglomerates, limestones and even rock-salt—must 
be ascribed to the action of heat, and that even the 
formation of chalk-flints and the silicification of fossil 
wood were due to the injection of molten silica ! 

What was still more unfortunate in Hutton’s case 
was that, in his enthusiasm, he used expressions which 
led to his being charged with heresy and even with 
being an enemy of religion. His writings were 
further so obscure in style as often to lead to miscon- 
ception as to their true meaning, while his great work 
—so far as the fragment which was published goes— 
contained few records of original observations on 
which his theory was based. 

Dr Fitton has pointed out very striking coinci- 
dences between the writings of Generelli and those of 
Hutton, and has suggested that the latter may have 
derived his views from the eloquent Italian friar ™. 
But for this suggestion, I think that there is no real 
foundation. Darwin and Wallace, as we shall see 
later, were quite unconscious of their having been 
forestalled in the theory of Natural Selection by 
Dr Wells and Patrick Matthew; and Hutton, like 
his successor Lyell, in all probability arrived, quite 


sng] OF EVOLUTION 19 


independently, and by different lines of reasoning, 
at conclusions identical with those of Generelli and 
Desmarest. 

Although, as we shall see, Hutton failed to greatly 
influence the scientific thought of his day, yet all will 
now agree with Lyell that ‘Hutton laboured to give 
fixed principles to geology, as Newton had succeeded 
in doing to astronomy™’; and with Zittel that 
‘Hution’s Theory of the Earth is one of the master- 
pieces in the history of geology” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE TRIUMPH OF CATASTROPHISM OVER 
EVOLUTION 


THERE is no fact in the history of science which is 
more certain than that those great pioneers of Evo- 
lution in the Inorganic world—Generelli, Desmarest 
and Hutton—utterly failed to recommend their 
doctrines to general acceptance ; and that, at the 
beginning of last century, everything in the nature of 
evolutionary ideas was almost universally discredited 
—alike by men of science and the world at large. 

The causes of the neglect and opprobrium which 
befel all evolutionary teachings are not difficult to 
discover. The old Greek philosophers saw no more 
reason to doubt the possibility of creation by evolu- 
tion, than by direct mechanical means. But, on the 
revival of learning in Europe, evolution was at once 
confronted by the cosmogonies of Jewish and Arabian 
writers, which were incorporated in sacred books; and 
not only were the ideas of the sudden making and 
destruction of the world and all things in it regarded 


cH. IV] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 21 


as revealed truth, but the periods of time necessary for 
evolution could not be admitted by those who believed 
the beginning of the world to have been recent, and 
its end to be imminent. Thus ‘Catastrophic’ ideas 
came to be regarded as orthodox, and evolutionary 
ones as utterly irreligious and damnable. 

There are few more curious facts in the history of 
science than the contrast between the reception of 
the teaching of the Saxon professor Werner, and 
those of Hutton, the Scotch philosopher, his great 
rival. While the enthusiastic disciples of the former 
carried their master’s ideas everywhere, acting with 
missionary zeal and fervour, and teaching his doctrines 
almost as though they were a divine revelation, the 
latter, surrounded by a few devoted friends, saw his 
teachings everywhere received with persistent mis- 
representation, theological vituperation or contemp- 
tuous neglect. Even in Edinburgh itself, one of 
Werner’s pupils dominated the teaching of the 
University for half a century, and established a society 
for the propagation of the views which Hutton so 
strongly opposed. 

When it is remembered that Hutton wrote at a 
time when ‘ heresy-hunting’ in this country had been 
excited to such a dangerous extent, through the 
excesses of the French Revolution, that his con- 
temporary, Priestley, had been hounded from his home 
and country for proclaiming views which at that 


22 THE COMING [CH. 


time were regarded as unscriptural, it becomes less 
difficult to understand the prejudice that was excited 
against the gentle and modest philosopher of 
Edinburgh. 

We have employed the term ‘Catastrophism’ to 
indicate the views which were prevalent at the 
beginning of last century concerning the origin of the 
rock-masses of the globe and their fossil contents. 
These views were that at a number of successive 
epochs—of which the age of Noah was the latest— 
great revolutions had taken place on the earth’s 
surface ; that during each of these cataclysms all 
living things were destroyed; and that, after an 
interval, the world was restocked with fresh assem- 
blages of plants and animals, to be destroyed in turn 
and entombed in the strata at the next revolution. 

Whewell, in 1830, contrasted this teaching with 
that of Hutton and Lyell in the following passage :— 
‘These two opinions will probably for some time 
divide the geological world into two sects, which may 
perhaps be designated the “ Uniformitarians” and 
the “Catastrophists.” The latter has undoubtedly 
been of late the prevalent doctrine.’ It is interesting 
to note, as showing the confidence felt in their tenets 
by the ‘Catastrophists’ of that day, that Whewell 
adds ‘We conceive that Mr Lyell will find it a harder 
task than he imagines to overturn the established 
belief | ’ 


Iv] OF EVOLUTION 23 


Some authors have suggested that the doctrine 
taught by Generelli, Desmarest and Hutton, and later 
by Scrope and Lyell, for which Whewell proposed the 
somewhat cumbrous term ‘ Uniformitarianism, but 
which was perhaps better designated by Grove in 
1866 as ‘Continuity“, was distinct from, and sub- 
sidiary to, Evolution—and this view could claim for a 
time the support of a very great authority. 

In 1869, Huxley delivered an address to the 
Geological Society, in which he postulated the exis- 
tence of ‘three more or less contradictory systems of 
geological thought, under the names of ‘Catastro- 
phism,’ ‘Uniformitarianism’ and ‘Evolution. In 
this essay, distinguished by all his wonderful lucidity 
and forceful logic, Huxley sought to establish the 
position that evolution is a doctrine, distinct from and 
im advance of that of uniformitarianism, and that 
Hutton and Playfair—‘and to a less extent Lyell’— 
had acted unwisely in deprecating the extension of 
Geology into enquiries concerning ‘the beginning of 
things.’ 

But there is no doubt that Huxley at a later 
period was led to qualify, and indeed to largely modify, 
the views maintained in that address. In a foot- 
note to an essay written in April 1887, he asserts 
‘What I mean by “evolutionism” is consistent and 
thoroughgoing uniformitarianism’; and in the same 
year he wrote in his Reception of the Origin of 


24 THE COMING [on. 


Species: ‘Consistent uniformitarianism postulates 
evolution, as much in the organic as in the inorganic 
world?”.’ 

It is not difficult to trace the causes of this change 
in the attitude of mind with which Huxley regarded 
the doctrine of ‘uniformitarianism.’ He assures us 
‘I owe more than I can tell to the careful study of 
the Principles of Geology, and again ‘ Lyell was for 
others as for me the chief agent in smoothing the road 
for Darwin”. From the perusal of the letters of 
Lyell, published in 1881, Huxley learned that the 
author of the Principles of Geology had, at a very 
early date, been convinced that evolution was true of 
the organic as well as of the inorganic world—though 
he had been unable to accept Lamarckism, or any 
other hypothesis on the subject that had, up to that 
time, been suggested. There can be little doubt, 
however, that a chief influence in bringing about the 
change in Huxley’s views was his intercourse with 
Darwin—who was, from first to last, an uncom- 
promising ‘ uniformitarian.’ 

We are fully justified, then, in regarding the 
teaching of Hutton and Lyell (to which Whewell gave 
the name of ‘uniformitarianism’ as being identical 
with evolution. The cockpit in which the great battle 
between catastrophism and evolution was fought out, 
as we shall see in the sequel, was the Geological 
Society of London, where doughty champions of each 


Iv] OF EVOLUTION 25 


of the rival doctrines met in frequent combat and 
long maintained the struggle for supremacy. 

Fitton has very truly said that ‘the views proposed 
by Hutton failed to produce general conviction at 
the time ; and several years elapsed before any one 
showed himself publicly concerned about them, either 
as an enemy or a friend”. Sad is it to relate that, 
when notice was at last taken of the memoir on the 
‘Theory of the Earth,’ it was by bitter opponents 
—such ‘Philistines’ (as Huxley calls them) as 
Kirwan, De Luc and Williams, who declared the 
author to be an enemy of religion. Not only did 
Hutton, unlike the writers of other theories of the 
earth, omit any statement that his views were based 
on the Scriptures, but, carried away by the beauty of 
the system of continuity which he advocated, he wrote 
enthusiastically ‘the result of this physical enquiry is 
that we find no vestige of a beginning—no prospect 
of an end”, This was unjustly asserted to be 
equivalent to a declaration that the world had neither 
beginning nor end; and thus it came about that 
Wernerism, Neptunism and Catastrophism were long 
regarded as synonymous with Orthodoxy, while 
Plutonism and ‘Uniformitarianism’ were looked 
upon with aversion and horror as subversive of 
religion and morality. 

Almost simultaneously with the foundation of the 
Wernerian Society of Edinburgh (in 1807) was the 


26 THE COMING (cH. 


establishment in London of the Geological Society. 
Originating in a dining club of collectors of minerals, 
the society consisted at first almost exclusively of 
mineralogists and chemists, including Davy, Wollaston, 
Sir James Hall, and later, Faraday and Turner. The 
bitter but barren conflict between the Neptunists and 
the Plutonists was then at its height, and it was, from 
the first, agreed in the infant society to confine its 
work almost entirely to the collection of facts, 
eschewing theory. During the first decade of its 
existence, it is true, the chief papers published by 
the society were on mineralogical questions; but 
gradually geology began to assert itself. The actual 
founder and first president of the society, Greenough, 
had been a pupil of Werner, and used all his great 
influence to discourage the dissemination of any but 
Wernerian doctrines—foreign geologists, like Dr 
Berger, being subsidised to apply the Wernerian 
classification and principles to the study of British 
rocks. Thus, in early days, the Geological Society 
became almost as completely devoted to the teaching 
of Wernerian doctrines as was the contemporary 
society in Edinburgh. 

Dr Buckland used to say that when he joined the 
Geological Society in 1813, ‘it had a very landed 
manner, and only admitted the professors of geology 
in Oxford and Cambridge on sufferance.’ 

But, gradually, changes began to be felt in this 


Iv] OF EVOLUTION 27 


aristocratic body of exclusive amateurs and wealthy 
collectors of minerals. William Smith, ‘the Father 
of English Geology ’—though he published little and 
never joined the society—exercised a most important 
influence on its work. By his maps, and museum of 
specimens, as well as by his communications, so freely 
made known, concerning his method of ‘identifying 
strata by their organic remains, many of the old geo- 
logists, who were not aware at the time of the source 
of their inspiration, were led to adopt entirely new 
methods of studying the rocks. In this way, the 
accurate mineralogical and geognostical methods of 
Werner came to be supplemented by the fruitful 
labours of the stratigraphical palaeontologist. Thenew 
school of geologists included men like William Phillips, 
Conybeare, Sedgwick, Buckland, De la Beche, Fitton, 
Mantell, Webster, Lonsdale, Murchison, John Phillips 
and others, who laid the foundations of British strati- 
graphical geology. 

But these great geological pioneers, almost with- 
out exception, maintained the Wernerian doctrines 
and were firm adherents of Catastrophism. The three 
great leaders—the enthusiastic Buckland, the eloquent 
Sedgwick, and the indefatigable Conybeare—were 
clergymen, as were also Whewell and Henslow, and 
they were all honestly, if mistakenly, convinced that 
the Huttonian teaching was opposed to the Scriptures 


28 THE COMING [CH. 


and inimical to religion and morality. Buckland at 
Oxford, and Sedgwick at Cambridge, made geology 
popular by combining it with equestrian exercise ; 
and Whewell tells us how the eccentric Buckland used 
to ride forth from the University, with a long caval- 
cade of mounted students, holding forth with sarcasm 
and ridicule concerning ‘the inadequacy of existing 
causes,’ 

And Sedgwick at Cambridge was no less firmly 
opposed to evolutionary doctrine, eloquently declaim- 
ing at all times against the unscriptural tenets of the 
Huttonians. 

I cannot better illustrate the complete neglect at 
that time by leading geologists in this country of the 
Huttonian teaching than by pointing to the Report 
drawn up in 1833, by Conybeare, for the British 
Association, on ‘The Progress, Actual State and 
Ulterior Prospects of Geological Science”. This 
valuable memoir of 47 pages opens with a sketch of 
the history of the science, in which the chief Italian, 
French and German investigators are referred to, but 
the name of Hutton is not even mentioned ! 

And if positive evidence is required of the con- 
tempt which the early geologists felt for Hutton and 
his teachings, it will be found in the same author’s 
introduction to that classical work, the Outlines of 
Geology (1822), in which he says of Hutton, after 


iv] OF EVOLUTION 29 


praising his views on granite veins and “trap 
rocks ” :— 


‘The wildness of many of his theoretical views, however, went 
far to counterbalance the utility of the additional facts which he 
collected from observation. He who could perceive in geology 
nothing but the ordinary operation of actual causes, carried 
on in the same manner through infinite ages, without the 
trace of a beginning or the prospect of an end, must have 
surveyed them through the medium of a preconceived hypothesis 
alone*4,’ 


John Playfair, the brilliant author of the Illustra- 
tions of the Huttonian Theory, died in 1819; under 
happier conditions his able work might have done for 
Inorganic Evolution what his great master failed to 
accomplish ; but the dead weight of prejudice and the 
dread of anything that seemed to savour of infidelity 
was, at the time of the great European struggle 
against revolutionary France, too great to be removed 
even by his lucid statements and eloquent advocacy. 
James Hall and Leonard Horner, two faithful disciples 
of Hutton, who had joined the infant Geological 
Society, forsook it early, the former leaving it on 
account of the quarrel with the Royal Society, the 
latter retaining his fellowship and interest, but going 
to live at Edinburgh. Greenough, ‘The Objector 
General, as he was called, was left, fanatically 
opposing any attempt to stem the current that had 


30 THE COMING [CH. 


set so strongly in favour of Wernerism and Neptunism, 
and the Catastrophic doctrines which all thought to 
be necessary conclusions from them. The great 
heroic workers of that day—while they were laying 
well and truly the foundations of historical geology— 
were, one and all, indifferent to, or violently opposed 
to, the Huttonian teaching. Neither Fitton nor John 
Phillips, who at a later date showed sympathy with 
evolutionary doctrines, were the men to fight the 
battle of an unpopular cause. 

Attempts have been made by both Playfair and 
Fitton to explain how it was that Hutton’s teaching 
failed to arrest the attention it deserved. The former 
justly asserted that the world was tired of the per- 
formances issued under the title of ‘theories of the 
earth’; and that the condensed nature of Hutton’s 
writings, with their ‘embarrassment of reasoning and 
obscurity of style®’ are largely responsible for the 
neglect into which they fell. 

Fitton, in 1839, wrote in the Hdinburgh Review, 
‘The original work of Hutton (in two volumes) is in 
fact so scarce that no very great number of our 
readers can have seen it. No copy exists at present 
in the libraries of the Royal Society, the Linnean, 
or even the Geological Society of London**!’ He 
also points out that Hutton’s work, and even the 
more lucid Lélusirations of the Huttonian Theory, 


iv | OF EVOLUTION 31 


were almost unknown on the continent, owing to the 
isolation of Great Britain during the war; and he 
even suggests that the popularity of Playfair in this 
country may have not improbably led to the neglect 
of the original work of Hutton”. 

On the continent, indeed, the authority of Cuvier 
was supreme, and in his Essay on the Theory of the 
Earth, prefixed to his Opus magnum—the Ossemens 
Fossiles—the great naturalist threw the whole weight 
of his influence into the scale of Catastrophism. He 
maintained that a series of tremendous cataclysms 
had affected the globe-—the last being the Noachian 
deluge—and that the floods of water that overspread 
the earth, during each of these events, had buried 
the various groups of animals, now extinct, that had 
been successively created. 

If anything had been wanted in England to sup- 
port and confirm the views that were then supposed 
to be the only ones in harmony with the Scriptures, 
it was found in the great authority of Cuvier. As 
Zittel justly says, Cuvier’s theory of ‘ World-Cata- 
strophies —‘ which afforded a certain scientific basis 
for the Mosaic account of the “Flood,” was received with 
special cordiality in England, for there, more than in 
any other country, theological doctrines had always 
affected geological conceptions **.’ Britain, which had 
produced the great philosopher, Hutton, had now 


32 THE COMING OF EVOLUTION [cH. Iv 


become the centre of the bitterest opposition to his 
teachings ! 

But ‘the darkest hour of night is that which 
precedes the dawn,’ and while the forces of reaction 
in this country appeared to be triumphant over 
Hutton’s teaching, there was in preparation, to use the 
words of Darwin, a.‘ grand work’...‘ which the future 
historian will recognise as having produced a revolu- 
tion in natural science.’ 


CHAPTER V 


THE REVOLT OF SCROPE AND LYELL AGAINST 
CATASTROPHISM 


THE year 1797, in which the illustrious Hutton 
died, leaving behind him the noble fragments of 
a monumental work, was signalised by the birth 
of two men, who were destined to bring about the 
overthrow of Catastrophism, and to establish, upon 
the firm foundation of reasoned observation, the 
despised doctrine of Uniformitarianism or Evolution 
—as outlined by Generelli, Desmarest and Hutton. 
These two men were George Poulett Thomson (who 
afterwards took the name of Scrope) and Charles 
Lyell. Both of them were, from their youth up- 
wards, brought under the strongest influences of 
the prevalent anti-evolutionary teachings ; but both 
emancipated themselves from the effects of these 
teachings, being led gradually by their geological 
travels and observations, not only to reject their 
early faith, but to become the champions of Evolution. 


J. KE. 3 


34 THE COMING [cn. 


There was a singular parallel between the early 
careers of these two men. Both were the sons of 
parents of ample means, and were thus freed from 
the distractions of a business or profession, while 
throughout life they alike remained exempt from 
family cares. Each of them received the ordinary 
education of the English upper classes—Scrope at 
Harrow, and Lyell at Salisbury, in a school conducted 
by a Winchester master on public-school lines. In 
due course, the two young men proceeded to the 
University—Scrope to Cambridge, to come under the 
influence of the sagacious and eloquent Sedgwick, 
and Lyell to Oxford, to catch inspiration from the 
enthusiastic but eccentric Buckland. On the opening 
up of the continent, by the termination of the French 
wars, each of the young men accompanied his family 
in a carriage-tour (as was the fashion of the time) 
through France, Switzerland and Italy; and both 
utilised the opportunities thus afforded them, to 
make long walking excursions for geological study. 
They both returned again and again to the continent 
for the purpose of geological research, and in the year 
1825, at the age of 28, found themselves associated 
as joint-secretaries of the Geological Society. By 
this time they had arrived at similar convictions 
concerning the causes of geological phenomena— 
convictions which were in direct opposition to the 
views of their early teachers, and equally obnoxious 


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v] OF EVOLUTION 35 


to all the leaders of geological thought in the infant 
society which they had joined. 

It is interesting to note that each of these two 
young geologists arrived independently, as the result 
of their own studies and observations, at their 
conclusions concerning the futility of the prevailing 
catastrophic doctrines. This I am able to affirm, not 
only from their published and unpublished letters, 
but from frequent conversations I had with them in 
their later years. 

Scrope, who was slightly the elder of the two 
friends, spent a considerable time in that wonderful 
district of France—the Auvergne—in the year 1821, 
and though he had not seen the map and later 
memoirs of Desmarest, he pourtrayed the structure 
of the country in a series of very striking panoramic 
views, and was led, independently of the great French 
observer, to the same conclusions as his concerning 
the volcanic origin of the basalts and the formation 
of the valleys by river-action. Scrope was at that 
time equally ignorant of the views propounded both 
by Generelli and by Hutton. 

By April 6th, 1822, Scrope had completed his 
masterly work The Geology and Extinct Volcanoes 
of Central France, and had despatched it to England. 
It would be idle to speculate now as to what might 
have been the effect of that work—so full of the 
results of accurate observation, and so suggestive in 

Bab 


36 THE COMING [cH. 


its reasoning—had it been published at that time. 
It is quite possible that much of the credit now 
justly assigned to Lyell, would have belonged to his 
friend. Unfortunately, however, Scrope, instead of 
seeing his work through the press, determined first 
to make another tour in Italy. He arrived at Naples 
just in time to witness and describe the grandest 
eruption of Vesuvius in modern times, that of October 
1822. What he witnessed then—the blowing away 
of the whole upper part of the mountain and the 
formation of a vast crater 1000 feet deep—made a 
profound impression on Scrope’s mind. His interest 
thus strongly aroused concerning igneous phenomena, 
Scrope continued his travels and observations on the 
volcanic rocks of the peninsula of Italy and its 
islands, and was thus led to a number of important 
conclusions in theoretical geology, which he embodied 
in a work, published in 1825, entitled Considerations 
on Volcanos: the probable causes of their phenomena, 
the laws which determine their march, the disposition 
of their products, and ther connexion with the present 
state and past history of the globe; leading to the 
establishment of a New Theory of the Earth. 

It is only right to point out that, in calling this 
book a new ‘Theory of the Earth, Scrope had no 
intention of comparing it with Hutton’s great 
work, with which he was at that time altogether 
unacquainted. Nevertheless, his conclusions, though 


Vv] OF EVOLUTION 37 


independently arrived at, were almost identical with 
those of the great Scotch philosopher. But Scrope 
made the same mistake as Hutton had done before 
him. He allowed his theoretical conclusions to 
precede, instead of following upon an account of 
the observations on which they were based. Scrope’s 
book is certainly one of the most original and 
suggestive contributions ever made to geological 
science; but the very speculative character of a 
large portion of the work led to the neglect of the 
really valuable hypotheses and acute observations 
which it contained. In the preface, however, the 
author gives a most striking and complete summary 
of the doctrine of Evolution as opposed to Cata- 
strophism, in the inorganic world, as will be shown 
by the following extracts :— 


Geology has for its business a knowledge of the processes 
which are in continual or occasional operation within the limits 
of our planet, and the application of these laws to explain the 
appearances discovered by our Geognostical researches, so as from 
these materials to deduce conclusions as to the past history of 
the globe. 

The surface of the globe exposes to the eye of the Geognost 
abundant evidence of a variety of changes which appear to have 
succeeded one another during an incalculable lapse of time. 


These changes are chiefly, 


I. Variations of level between different constituent parts of 
the solid surface of the globe. 


38 THE COMING [cH 


II. The destruction of former rocks, and their reproduction 
under another form. 


III. The production of rocks de novo upon the earth’s surface. 


Geologists have usually had recourse for the explanation of 
these changes to the supposition of sundry violent and extra- 
ordinary catastrophes, cataclysms, or general revolutions having 
occurred in the physical state of the earth’s surface. 

As the idea imparted by the term Cataclysm, Catastrophe, 
or Revolution, is extremely vague, and may comprehend any thing 
you choose to imagine, it answers for the time very well as an 
explanation ; that is, it stops further inquiry. But it has also the 
disadvantage of effectually stopping the advance of science, by 
involving it in obscurity and confusion. 

If, however, in lieu of forming guesses as to what may have 
been the possible causes and nature of these changes, we pursue 
that, which I conceive the only legitimate path of geological 
inquiry, and begin by examining the laws of nature which are 
actually in force, we cannot but perceive that numerous physical 
phenomena are going on at this moment on the surface of the 
globe, by which various changes are produced in its constitution 
and external characters; changes extremely analogous to those 
of earlier date, whose nature is the main object of geological 
inquiry. 

These processes are principally, 

I. The Atmospheric phenomena. 


II. The laws of the circulation and residence of Water on 
the exterior of the globe. 


Ill. The action of Volcanos and Earthquakes. 


The changes effected before our eyes, by the operation of these 
causes, in the constitution of the crust of the earth are chiefly— 


I. The Destruction of Rocks. 
If. The Reproduction of others. 


v] OF EVOLUTION 39 


III. Changes of Level. 


IV. The Production of New Rocks from the interior of the 
globe upon its surface. 


Changes which in their general characters bear so strong an 
analogy to those which are suspected to have occurred in the 
earlier ages of the world’s history, that, until the processes which 
give rise to them have been maturely studied under every shape, 
and then applied with strict impartiality to explain the appearances 
in question ; and until, after a long investigation, and with the 
most liberal allowances for all possible variations, and an unlimited 
series of ages, they have been found wholly inadequate to the 
purpose, it would be the height of absurdity to have recourse 
to any gratuitous and unexampled hypothesis for the solution 
of these analogous facts. 


It was not till 1826, four years after the completion 
of the work, that Scrope managed to publish his book 
on the Auvergne, and to tear himself away from 
the speculative questions by which he had become 
obsessed. No one could be more candid than he 
was in acknowledging the causes of his failure to 
impress his views upon his contemporaries. Writing 
in 1858, he said of his Considerations on Volcanos :— 


‘In that work unfortunately were included some speculations 
on theoretic cosmogony, which the public mind was not at that 
time prepared to entertain. Nor was this my first attempt at 
authorship, sufficiently well composed, arranged or even printed, 
to secure a fair appreciation for the really sound and, I believe, 
original views on many points of geological interest which it 
contained. I ought, no doubt, to have begun with a description 


40 THE COMING [CH. 


of the striking facts which I was prepared to produce from the 
volcanic regions of Central France and Italy, in order to pave the 
way for a favourable reception, or even a fair hearing, of the 
theoretical views I had been led from these observations to 
form®’ 


He adds that ‘this obvious error was pointed out 
in a very friendly manner’ in a notice of the memoir 
on The Geology of Central France, which was 
contributed by Lyell to the Quarterly Review in 
1So7e3 

Scrope’s geological career however—though one 
of so much promise—-was brought to a somewhat 
abrupt termination. In 1821 he had married the 
last representative and heiress of the Scropes, the 
old Earls of Wiltshire, and soon afterwards he settled 
down at the family seat of Castle Combe, eventually 
devoting his attention almost exclusively to social 
and political questions. From 1833 to 1868, when 
he retired from Parliament, he was member for 
Stroud; and though he seldom took part in the 
debates, he became famous as a writer of political 
tracts, thus acquiring the sobriquet of ‘Pamphlet 
Scrope. He himself used to relate an amusing 
incident at his own expense. His great friend Lord 
Palmerston, on being greeted with the question, 
‘Have you read my last pamphlet?’ replied mis- 
chievously, ‘Well Scrope, I hope I have!’ 

It is sad to relate that, owing to a carriage accident, 





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Scrope’s wife became a confirmed invalid and he had 
no child to succeed to the estate. Though cut off 
by other duties from the geological world, Scrope 
maintained his correspondence with his old friend 
Lyell, and, as we shall see in the sequel, was able to 
render him splendid service by the luminous though 
discriminating reviews of the Principles of Geology 
in the Quarterly Review. Throughout his life, 
however, Scrope preserved a love of geology, and 
occasionally contributed to the literature of the 
science; and in his closing years, when unable to 
travel himself, he gave to others the means of carry- 
ing on the researches in which he had from the first 
been so deeply interested. 


Fortunately for science, Lyell’s devotion to 
geological study was not, like Scrope’s, interrupted 
by the claims made upon him by social and political 
questions. Feeling though he did, with his friend, 
the deepest sympathy in all liberal movements, and 
being especially interested in the reform of educa- 
tional methods, his geological work always had the 
first claim on his time and attention, and nothing was 
allowed to interfere with his scientific labours. 

Charles Lyell was the eldest son of a Scottish 
laird, whose forbears, after making a fortune in India, 
had purchased the estate of Kinnordy in Strathmore, 
on the borders of the Highlands. Lyell’s father was 


42 THE COMING [cH. 


a man of culture, a good classical scholar, a translator 
and commentator on Dante, and a cryptogamic 
botanist of some reputation. 

Lyell’s mother, an Englishwoman from York- 
shire, was a person of great force of character ; this 
she showed when, on coming to Kinnordy, she found 
drunkenness so prevalent among the lairds of this 
part of Scotland, as to cause a fear on her part, that 
her husband might be drawn into the dangerous 
society : she therefore induced him, when their son 
Charles was only three months old, to abandon their 
Scottish home, and settle in the New Forest of 
Hampshire. Thus it came about that the future 
geologist, though born in Scotland, became, by 
education, habits and association, English. 

Charles Lyell’s attention was first drawn to 
geology by seeing the quartz-crystals and chalcedony 
exposed in the broken chalk-flints, which he, as a boy 
of ten, used to roll down, in company with his school- 
fellows, from the walls of Old Sarum. Like Charles 
Darwin, too, he became an ardent and enthusiastic 
collector of insects, and grew to be a tall and active 
young fellow, a keen sportsman, with only one draw- 
back—a weakness of the eyes which troubled him 
through all his after life. 

It was when at the age of seventeen he went to 
Oxford and came under the influence of Dr Buckland 
that Lyell first became deeply engrossed in geology. 


v] OF EVOLUTION 43 


Lyell used to tell many amusing stories of the 
oddities of his old teacher and friend Buckland. In 
his lectures, both in the University and on public 
platforms, Buckland would keep his audience in roars 
of laughter, as he imitated what he thought to be 
the movements of the iguanodon or megatherium, 
or, seizing the ends of his long clerical coat-tails, 
would leap about to show how the pterodactyle flew. 
Lyell became greatly attached to Buckland, who used 
to take him privately on geological expeditions. On 
one of these occasions, they were dining at an inn, 
where a gentleman at another table became greatly 
scandalised by Buckland’s conversation and manners. 
The professor, seeing this, became more outrageous 
than ever, and on parting with Lyell for the night 
took the candle and placed it between his teeth, so 
as to illuminate the mouth-cavity exclaiming, ‘There 
Lyell, practise this long enough and you will be able 
to do it as well as Ido.’ When Buckland had retired, 
the stranger revealed himself to Lyell as an old friend 
of his father’s, adding ‘I hope you will never be seen 
in the company of that buffoon again.” ‘Oh! Sir,’ 
said the startled undergraduate, ‘that is my professor 
at Oxford!’ But Buckland did not always originate 
the fun, for Lyell told me that, when the professor 
visited Kinnordy in his company, he led him a long 
tramp under promise of showing him ‘diluvium 
intersected by whin dykes,’ and, in the end, pointed 


44 THE COMING [cH. 


to fields in a boulder-clay country separated by gorse 
(‘whin’) hedges (‘dykes’). 

Buckland, as shown by his Vindiczae Geologicae 
(1820) and his Bridgewater Treatise (1836), was the 
most uncompromising of the advocates for making all 
geological teaching subordinate to the literal inter- 
pretation of the early chapters of Genesis; and in 
his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823) he stoutly maintained 
the view that all the superficial deposits of the globe 
were the result of the Noachian deluge! He was 
indeed the great leader of the Catastrophists, and it 
is not surprising to find Lyell, while still under his 
influence, scoffing at ‘the Huttonians *% 

That Buckland greatly influenced Lyell in his 
youth, especially by inoculating him with his splendid 
enthusiasm for geology, there can be no doubt ; and 
Lyell, far as he departed in after life from the views 
of his teacher, never forgot his indebtedness to the 
Oxford professor. Even in 1832, in publishing the 
second edition of the first volume of his Principles, he 
dedicated it to Buckland, as one ‘ who first instructed 
me in the elements of geology, and by whose energy 
and talents the cultivation of science in the country 
has been so eminently promoted *.’ 

On leaving Oxford in 1819, at the age of twenty- 
two, Lyell joined the Geological Society. What were 
the dominant opinions at that time on geological 
theory among the distinguished men, who were there 


v] OF EVOLUTION 45 


laying the foundations of stratigraphical geology, we 
have already seen. Lyell, in his frequent visits to the 
continent, became a friend of the illustrious Cuvier, 
whose strong bias for Catastrophism was so forcibly 
shown in his writings and conversation. 

What then, we may ask, were the causes which led 
Lyell to abandon the views in which he had been 
instructed, and to become the great champion of 
Evolutionism ? 

It has often been assumed that Lyell was led by 
the study of Hutton’s works to adopt the ‘ Uniformi- 
tarian’ doctrines. But there is ample evidence that 
such was not the case. As late as the year 1839, 
Lyell wrote of Hutton, ‘Though I tried, I doubt 
whether I fairly read half his writings, and skimmed 
the rest**’ ; and he emphatically assured Scrope ‘ Von 
Hoff has assisted me most*®®’ 

The fact is certain that Lyell, quite independently, 
arrived at the same conclusions as Hutton, bué by 
totally different lines of reasoning. 

As early as 1817, when Lyell was only twenty 
years of age, he visited the Norfolk coast and was 
greatly impressed by the evidence of the waste of the 
cliffs about Cromer, Aldborough, and Dunwich ; and 
three years later we find him studying the opposite 
kind of action of the sea in the formation of new 
land at Dungeness and Romney Marsh. All through 
his life there may be seen the results of these early 


46 THE COMING (cH. 


studies in a tendency which he showed to overrate 
marine action; the chief defect in his early views 
consisting in not fully realising the importance 
of that subaerial denudation—of which Hutton was 
so great an exponent. But it was in his native 
county of Forfarshire that Lyell found the most 
complete antidote to the Catastrophic teachings. 
Buckland had taught him that the ‘till’ of the 
country had been thrown down, just 4170 years 
before, by the Noachian deluge: while Cuvier had 
asserted that the study of freshwater limestones 
proved them to differ from any recent deposit by 
their crystalline character, the absence of shells and 
the presence of plant-remains, as well as by the 
occasional occurrence in them of bands of flint. As 
the result of this, Cuvier and Brongniart had declared 
that the freshwater of the ancient world possessed 
properties which are not observed in that of modern 
lakes*®®, Lyell visited Kinnordy from time to time 
between 1817 and 1824, and found on his father’s 
estate and other localities in Strathmore a number 
of small lakes, lying in hollows of the boulder clay. 
These were being drained and their deposits quarried 
for the purpose of ‘marling’ the land; the excava- 
tions thus made showed that, under peat containing 
a boat hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, there were 
calcareous deposits, sometimes 16 to 20 feet in thick- 
ness, which passed into a rock, solid and crystalline 


Vv] OF EVOLUTION 47 


in character as the materials of the older geological 
formations and containing the stems and fruits of the 
freshwater plant Chara (Stone wort). 

With the help of Robert Brown the botanist, and 
of analyses made by Daubeny, with the advice of his 
life-long friend, Faraday, Lyell was able to demon- 
strate that from the waters of the Forfarshire lakes, 
containing the most minute proportions of calcareous 
salts, a limestone, identical in all respects with those 
of the older rocks of the globe, had been deposited, 
with excessive slowness, by the action of plant-life®. 
He was thus enabled to supply a complete refutation 
of the views put forward by Buckland and Cuvier. 

Thus while Hutton had been led to his conclusion 
concerning evolution in the inorganic world, by 
studying the waste going on in the weathered crags 
and the flooded rivers of his native land, Lyell’s 
conversion to the same views was mainly brought 
about by the study of changes due to the action of 
the sea along the English coasts, and by studying the 
evidence of constant, though slow, deposition of lime- 
stone-rocks, by the seemingly most insignificant of 
agencies. 

Lyell however did not by any means neglect the 
study of the action of rain and rivers. During his 
visits to Forfarshire, he had his initials and the date 
cut by a mason on many portions of the rocky river- 
beds about his home. Fifty years afterwards (in 


48 THE COMING [cn. 


1874) I visited with him the several localities, to 
ascertain what amount of waste had resulted from 
the constant flow of water over these hard rocks. It 
was in most cases singularly small, the inscriptions 
being still visible, though deprived of their sharpness; 
even the sandy detritus carried along by the streams, 
being buoyed up by the water, had not been able in 
half a century to wear away a thickness of half-an- 
inch of the hard rock. The most singular result 
we noticed was, that the leaden small shot fired by 
sportsmen, in the Highland tracts, whence these 
streams flowed, had collected in great numbers in 
hollows formed by the young geologist’s inscriptions. 

By his father’s request, Lyell after leaving Oxford 
studied for the bar, but there is no doubt that his 
main interest was in geological study. He had made 
the acquaintance of Dr Mantell, and carried on 
a number of researches in the south of England 
either alone or with that geologist®*. Four years 
after joining the Geological Society, in which he was 
a constant worker, he became one of the secretaries. 
This was in 1823 when he was only 26 years of age. 
His frequent visits to Paris and to various parts of 
the continent enabled him to exchange ideas with 
many foreign naturalists, and it is clear from his 
correspondence that at this early period he had 
abandoned the Catastrophic doctrines of his teachers 

and friends. 


v] OF EVOLUTION 49 


Let us now consider the outside influences which 
were at work on Lyell’s mind in these early days. In 
the year 1818,the eminent palaeontologist Blumenbach 
induced the University of Gottingen to offer a prize 
for an essay on ‘The investigation of the changes 
that have taken place in the earth's surface con- 
Sormation since historic times, and the applications 
which can be made of such knowledge in investigating 
earth revolutions beyond the domain of hastory.” A 
young German, Von Hoff, won the prize by a most 
able book, displaying great erudition, entitled The 
History of those Natural Changes in the Earth’s 
Surface, which are proved by Tradition. The 
first volume of this work appeared in 1822, and 
treated of the results produced on the land by the 
action of the sea; the second volume, published in 
1824, dealt with the effects of volcanoes and earth- 
quakes. Von Hoff’s learned work was confined to 
the collection of data from classical and other early 
authors bearing on these subjects, and to reasonings 
based on these records; for, unfortunately, he did 
not possess the means necessary for travelling and 
making observations in the districts described by him. 
Lyell acknowledges the great assistance afforded to 
him by these two volumes of Von Hofl’s work, but, 
unlike that author, he was able to visit the various 
localities referred to, and to draw his own conclusions 
as to the nature of the changes which must have taken 

J. E. 4 


50 THE COMING (oH. 


place. Itis pleasant to be able to relate that the debt 
which he owed to Von Hoff was fully repaid by Lyell; 
for the learned German’s third volume appeared after 
the issue of the Principles of Geology, and as Zittel 
assures us ‘its influence on Von Hoff is quite apparent 
in the third volume of his work **’ 

At this period, too, Lyell had the advantage of 
travelling both on the continent and in various parts 
of Great Britain with the eminent French geologist, 
Constant Prevost, who had shown his courage by 
opposing some of the catastrophic teachings of the 
illustrious Cuvier himself. 

Still more important to Lyell were the oppor- 
tunities he enjoyed for comparing his conclusions 
with those of Scrope, who had joined the Geological 
Society in 1824, and became a joint secretary with 
Lyell in the following year. From both of them, in 
their old age, I heard many statements concerning the 
closeness and warmth of their friendship, and the 
constant interchange of ideas which took place 
between them at this time. 

From Scrope, Lyell heard of the occurrence of 
great beds of freshwater limestone in the Auvergne, 
on a far grander scale than in Strathmore, with many 
other facts concerning the geology of Central France, 
which so greatly excited him as in the end to alter 
all his plans concerning the publication of his own 
book. As soon as Scrope’s great work on Auvergne 


v] OF EVOLUTION 51 


was published, Lyell undertook the preparation of 
a review for the Quarterly—and this review was 
a very able and discriminating production. 

Although Lyell did not derive his views con- | 
cerning terrestrial evolution directly from Hutton, 
as is sometimes supposed, there were two respects 
in which he greatly profited when he came to read 
Hutton’s work at a later date. 

In the first place, he was very deeply impressed 
by the necessity of avoiding the odium theologicum, 
which had been so strongly, if unintentionally, aroused 
by Hutton, of whom he wrote, ‘I think he ran un- 
necessarily counter to the feelings and prejudices of 
the age. This is not courage or manliness in the 
cause of Truth, nor does it promote progress. It 
is an unfeeling disregard for the weakness of human 
nature, for it is our nature (for what reason heaven 
knows), but as zé 2s constitutional in our minds, to 
feel a morbid sensibility on matters of religious faith, 
I conceive that the same right feeling which guards 
us from outraging too violently the sentiments of our 
neighbours in the ordinary concerns of the world and 
its customs, should direct us still more so in this*.’ 

In the second place, Lyell was warned by the fate 
of Hutton’s writings that it was hopeless to look 
for success in combating the prevailing geological 
theories, unless he cultivated a literary style very 
different from that of the Theory of the Earth. 

4—2Z 


52 THE COMING (cn. 


Lyell’s father had to a great extent guided his son’s 
classical studies, and at Oxford, where Lyell took 
a good degree in classics, he practised diligently both 
prose and poetic composition. Lyell once told me 
that his tutor Dalby (afterwards a Dean) had put 
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 
into his hand with certain passages marked as ‘not 
to be read.’ When he had studied the whole work 
(of course including the marked passages) he said 
he conceived a profound admiration for the author’s 
literary skill—and this feeling he retained throughout 
his after life. It is not improbable, indeed, that 
Lyell learned from Gibbon that a ‘frontal attack’ 
on a fortress of error is much less likely to succeed 
than one of ‘sap and mine.’ Lyell was always most 
careful in the composition of his works, sparing no 
pains to make his meaning clear, while he aimed at 
elegance of expression and logical sequence in the 
presentation of his ideas. ‘The weakness of his eyes 
was a great difficulty to him, throughout his life, 
and, when not employing an amanuensis, he generally 
wrote stretched out on the floor or on a sofa, with his 
eyes close to the paper. 

The relation of Lyell’s views to those of Hutton, 
may best be described in the words of his contem- 
porary, Whewell, whose remarks written immediately 
after the publication of the first volume of the 
Principles, lose nothing in effectiveness from the 


v] OF EVOLUTION 53 


evident, if gentle, note of sarcasm running through 
them :— 


‘Hutton for the purpose of getting his continents above water, 
or manufacturing a chain of Alps or Andes, did not disdain to call 
in something more than common volcanic eruptions which we read 
of in newspapers from time to time. He was content to have 
a period of paroxysmal action—an extraordinary convulsion in 
the bowels of the earth—an epoch of general destruction and , 
violence, to usher in one of restoration and life. Mr Lyell throws 
away all such crutches, he walks alone in the path of his specula- 
tions ; he requires no paroxysms, no extraordinary periods ; he is 
content to take burning mountains as he finds them ; and, with 
the assistance of the stock of volcanoes and earthquakes now on 
hand, he undertakes to transform the earth from any one of its 
geological conditions to any other. He requires time, no doubt ; 
he must not be hurried in his proceedings. But, if we will allow 
him a free stage in the wide circuit of eternity, he will ask no | 
other favour; he will fight his undaunted way through forma- 
tions, transition and flétz—through oceanic and_ lacustrine 
deposits; and does not despair of carrying us triumphantly 
from the dark and venerable schist of Skiddaw, to the alter- 
nating tertiaries of the Isle of Wight, or even to the more recent 
shell-beds of the Sicilian coasts, whose antiquity is but, as it were, 
of yester-myriad of years#’ 


Never, surely, did words written in a tone of 
banter constitute such real and effective praise ! 

But though it is certain that Lyell did not derive 
his evolutionary views from Hutton, yet when he 
came to write his historical introduction to the 
Principles, he was greatly impressed by the proofs 


54 THE COMING OF EVOLUTION  [cH. v 


of genius shown by the great Scotch philosopher, 
and equally by the brilliant exposition of those views 
by Playfair in his Illustrations. To the former he 
gave unstinted praise for the breadth and originality 
of his views, and to the latter for the eloquence of his 
writings—adopting quotations chosen from these last, 
indeed, as mottoes for his own work. 

It is only just to add that for the violent pre- 
judices excited by some of his contemporaries against 
Hutton’s writings—as being directed against the 
theological tenets of the day and therefore subversive 
of religion—there is really no foundation whatever ; 
and every candid reader of the Theory of the Earth 
must acquit its author of any such design. The 
passage quoted on page 51 could only have been 
written by Lyell at a time when he was still un- 
acquainted with Hutton’s works, and was misled by 
common report concerning them. It is interesting 
to note, however, that the passage occurs in a letter 
written in December 1827, that is after the first draft 
of the Principles of Geology had been ‘delivered to 
the publisher, and before the preparation of the 
historical introduction, which would appear to have 
led to the first perusal of Hutton’s great work, and 
that of his brilliant illustrator, Playfair. 


CHAPTER VI 
‘THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY? 


WE have seen that as early as the year 1817, 
when he visited Kast Anglia, Lyell began to ex- 
perience vague doubts concerning the soundness of 
the ‘Catastrophist’ doctrines, which had been so 
strongly impressed upon him by Buckland. And | 
these doubts in the mind of the undergraduate of 
twenty years of age gradually acquired strength and 
definiteness during his frequent geological excursions, 
at home and abroad, during the next ten years, At 
what particular date the design was formed of writing 
a book and attacking the predominant beliefs of his 
fellow-geologists, we have no means of ascertaining 
exactly ; but from a letter written to his friend 
Dr Mantell, we find that at one time Lyell contem- 
plated publishing a book in the form of ‘ Conversations 
in Geology*, without putting his name to it. This 
was probably suggested by the manner in which 
Copernicus and Galileo sought to circumvent theo- 
logical opposition in the case of Astronomical Theory. 


56 THE COMING [CH. 


But this plan appears to have been soon aban- 
doned; and by the end of the year 1827, when he 
had reached the age of thirty, Lyell had sent to the 
printer the first manuscript of the Principles of 
Geology, proposing that it should appear in the 
course of the following year in two octavo volumes®. 

A great and sudden interruption to this plan 
occurred however, for just at this time Lyell was 
engaged in writing his review for the Quarterly of 
Scrope’s work on The Geology of Central France, and 
while doing this his interest was so strongly aroused 
by the accounts of the phenomena exhibited in the 
Auvergne, that he was led for a time to abandon the 
task of seeing his own book through the press ; and, 
having induced Murchison and his wife to accompany 
him, set off on a visit to that wonderful district. He 
also felt that, before completing the second part of his 
book, he needed more information concerning the 
Tertiary formations, especially in Italy. 

Lyell had been very early convinced of the 
supreme importance of travel to the geologist. In 
a letter to his friend Murchison he said :—‘ We must 
preach up travelling, as Demosthenes did “ delivery ” 
as the first, second and third requisites for a modern 
geologist, in the present adolescent state of the 
science**,’ 

And Professor Bonney has estimated that so far 
did he himself practise what he preached, that no 


v1] OF EVOLUTION 57 


less than one fourth of the period of his active life 
was spent in travel®. 

The joint excursion of Lyell and Murchison to 
the Auvergne was destined to have great influence 
on the minds of these pioneers in geological research ; 
both became satisfied from their studies that, with 
respect to the excavation of the valleys of the 
country, Scrope’s conclusions were irresistible ; and 
in a joint memoir this position was stoutly main- 
tained by them. 

It is interesting to notice the impression made by 
these two great geologists on one another during this 
joint expedition. 

Murchison wrote that he had seen in Lyell ‘the 
most scrupulous and minute fidelity of observation 
combined with close application in the closet and 
ceaseless exertion in the field*.’ 

But I recollect that Lyell once told me how 
difficult Murchison found it to restrain himself from 
impatience, when his companion’s attention was 
drawn aside by his entomological ardour. In an 
early letter, indeed, we find that Murchison often 
expressed a wish that Lyell’s sisters had been with 
them to attend to the insect-collecting and thus leave 
Lyell free for geological work*’. 

On the other hand, Lyell informed me _ that 
Murchison had rendered him a great service in 
showing how much a geologist could accomplish by 


58 THE COMING [cn. 


taking advantage of riding on horseback, and he 
declared in his letters that he ‘never had a better 
man to work with than Murchison’; nevertheless he 
ridiculed his ‘ keep-moving-go-it-if-it-kills-you ’ system 
as—quoting from the elder Matthews—he called it®. 

On parting from Murchison and his wife, after the 
Auvergne tour, Lyell proceeded to Italy and for more 
than a year he was busy studying the Tertiary 
deposits of Lombardy, the Roman states, Naples 
and Sicily, and conferring with the Italian geologists 
and conchologists. Thus it came about that he was 
not free to resume the task of seeing the Principles 
through the press till February 1829. 

Immediately after his return to England Lyell 
was compelled, with the assistance of his companion 
Murchison, to defend their conclusions concerning 
the excavations of valleys by rivers from a deter- 
mined attack of Conybeare, who was backed up 
by Buckland and Greenough; the old geologists 
endeavoured to prove that the river Thames had 
never had any part in the work of forming its 
valley. It is interesting to find that, on this 
occasion, Sedgwick, who was in the chair, was so 
far influenced by the arguments brought forward 
by the young men, as to lend some aid to those who 
had come to be called the ‘Fluvialists,’ in contra- 
distinction to the ‘ Diluvialists’ ; he went so far as to 
suggest that, with regard to the floods which the 


vil OF EVOLUTION 59 


Catastrophist invoked, it would be wiser at present to 
‘doubt and not dogmatise.’ 

To what extent the MS. of the Principles, sent 
to the publisher in 1827, was added to and altered 
two years later, we have no means of knowing ; but 
that the work was to a great extent rewritten would 
appear from a letter sent to Murchison by Lyell, just 
before his return to England. In it, he says :— 

‘My work is in part written, and all planned. It 
will not pretend to give even an abstract of all that 
is known in geology, but it will endeavour to establish 
the principle of reasoning in the science ; and all my 
geology will come in as illustration of my views of 
those principles, and as evidence strengthening the 
system necessarily arising out of the admission of 
such principles, which, as you know, are neither more 
nor less than that no causes whatever have from the 
earliest time to which we can look back to the present, 
ever acted, but those that are now acting, and that 
they never acted with different degrees of energy 
from that which they now exert’; but in 1833, in 
dedicating his third volume to Murchison, he refers 
to the MS., completed in 1827, as a ‘first sketch 
only of my Principles of Geology. 

At one period, Lyell contemplated again delaying 
publication till he had visited Iceland. In the end, 
however, after declining to act as professor of geology 
in the new ‘University of London’ (University College), 


60 THE COMING (cH. 


he set himself down steadily to the task of seeing the 
book through the press. It was at this time that 
Lyell experienced a singular piece of good fortune, 
comparable with that which befel Darwin thirty years 
afterwards, by his book falling into the hands of a 
very sympathetic reviewer. John Murray, who had 
undertaken the publication of the Principles, was 
also the publisher of the Quarterly Review, and 
Lockhart, the editor of that publication, undertook 
that an early notice of the book should appear, if the 
proof-sheets were sent to the reviewer. Buckland 
and Sedgwick were successively approached on the 
subject of reviewing Lyell’s book, but both declined 
on the ground of ‘want of time’; though I strongly 
suspect that their real motive in refusing the task 
was a disinclination to attack—as they would doubt- 
less have felt themselves compelled to do—a valued 
personal friend. Conybeare was, fortunately, thought 
to be out of the question, as Lockhart said he 
‘promises and does not perform in the reviewing line.’ 

Very fortunately at this juncture, Lockhart, who 
was in the habit of attending the Geological Society 
and listening to the debates (for as he used to say 
to his friends whom he took with him from the 
Athenaeum, ‘though I don’t care for geology, yet I 
do like to see the fellows fight’) thought of Scrope. 
Although he had practically retired from the active 
work of the Geological Society at this time, Scrope 


vi] OF EVOLUTION 61 


was known as an effective writer, and, happily for 
the progress of science, he undertook the review of 
Lyell’s book. 

Although, of course, Lyell had no voice in the 
choice of a reviewer for the Principles, yet he could 
not fail to rejoice in the fact that it had fallen to his 
friend, who so strongly sympathised with his views, 
to introduce it to the public. While the book was 
being printed and the review of it was in preparation, 
a number of letters passed between Lyell and Scrope, 
and the latter, before his death, gave me the carefully 
treasured epistles of his friend, with the drafts of 
some of his replies. These letters, some of which 
have been published, throw much light on the diffi- 
culties with which Lyell had to contend, and the 
manner in which he strove to meet them. 

As we have already seen, many of the leaders in 
the Geological Society at that day besides being 
strongly inclined to Wernerian and Cataclysmal views, 
had an honest, however mistaken, dread lest geo- 
logical research should lead to results, apparently 
not in harmony with the accounts given in Genesis 
of the Creation and the Flood. Lyell, as this corre- 
spondence shows, was most anxious to avoid exciting 
either scientific or theological prejudice. He wrote, 
‘I conceived the idea five or six years ago’ (that is 
in 1824 or 5) that ‘if ever the Mosaic geology could 
be set down without giving offence, it would be in an 


62 THE COMING (cH. 


historical sketch®?, and ‘I was afraid to point the 
moral...about Moses. Perhaps I should have been 
tenderer about the Koran®. He further says ‘full 
half of my history and comments was cut out, and 
even many facts, because either I, or Stokes, or 
Broderip, felt that it was anticipating twenty or 
thirty years of the march of honest feeling to declare 
it undisguisedly**’ 

Under these circumstances the publication by 
Scrope of his two long notices of the Principles 
in the Review which was regarded as the champion 
of orthodoxy, was most opportune. A very clear 
sketch was given in these reviews of the leading 
facts and the general line of argument; and at the 
same time the allowing of prejudice or prepossession 
to influence the judgment on such questions was very 
gently deprecated ©. 

But Scrope’s reviews did not by any means 
consist of an indiscriminate advocacy of Lyell’s 
views. In one respect-—that of the great importance 
of subaerial action as contrasted with marine action 
—Scrope’s views were at this time in advance of 
those of Lyell, and he called especial attention to the 
direct effects produced by rain in the earth-pillars 
of Botzen. These Lyell had not at the time seen, 
but took an early opportunity of visiting. Scrope, 
too, was naturally much more speculative in his modes 
of thought than Lyell, and argued for the probably 


vi] OF EVOLUTION 63 


greater intensity in past times of the agencies causing 
geological change, and for the legitimacy of discussing 
the mode of origin of the earth. Lyell, like Hutton, 
argued that he saw ‘no signs of a beginning,’ but his 
characteristic candour is shown when he wrote :— 

‘All I ask is, that at any given period of the past, 
don’t stop enquiry, when puzzled, by a reference to 
a “beginning,” which is all one with “another state of 
nature,” as it appears to me. But there is no harm 
in your attacking me, provided you point out that 
it is the proof I deny, not the probability of a 
beginning,’ 

Lyell clearly foresaw the opposition with which 
his book would be met and wisely resolved not to be 
drawn into controversy. He wrote :-— 

‘I daresay I shall not keep my resolution, but 
I will try to do it firmly, that when my book is 
attacked...I will not go to the expense of time in 
pamphleteering. I shall work steadily on Vol. HU, 
and afterwards, if the work succeeds, at edition 2, 
and I have sworn to myself that I will not go to the 
expense of giving time to combat in controversy. It 
is interminable work*’,’ 

In order to maintain this resolve, Lyell, the 
moment the last sheet of the volume was corrected, 
set off for a four months’ tour in France and Spain. 
While absent from England, he heard little of what 
was going on in the scientific world; but, on his 


64 THE COMING (cH. 


return, Lyell was told by Murray that in the three 
months before the Quarterly Review article appeared, 
650 copies of the volume, out of the 1500 printed, 
had been sold, and he anticipated the disposal of 
many more, when the review came out. This ex- 
pectation was realised and led to the issue of a 
second edition of. the first volume, of larger size 
and in better type. 

Lyell, from the first, had seen that it would be 
impossible to avoid the conclusion that the principles 
which he was advancing with respect to the inorganic 
world must be equally applicable to the organic world. 
At first he only designed to touch lightly on this 
subject, in the concluding chapters of his first volume, 
and to devote the second volume to the application 
of his principles to the interpretation of the geological 
record. He, however, found it impossible to include 
the chapters on changes in the organic world in the 
first volume and then decided to make them the 
opening portion of the second volume. 

It is evident, however, that as the work progressed, 
the interest of the various questions bearing on the 
origin of species grew in his mind. While Lyell found 
it impossible to accept the explanation of origin sug- 
gested by Lamarck, he was greatly influenced by the 
arguments in favour of evolution advanced by that 
naturalist ; and as he wrote chapter after chapter on 
the questions of the modification and variability of 


vi] OF EVOLUTION 65 


species, on hybridity, on the modes of distribution of 
plants and animals, and their consequent geographical 
relations, and discussed the struggle of existence 
going on everywhere in the organic world, in its 
bearings on the question of ‘centres of creation,’ he 
found the second volume growing altogether beyond 
reasonable limits. His intense interest in this part 
of his work is shown by his remark, ‘If I have suc- | 
ceeded so well with inanimate matter, surely I shall 
make a lively thing when I have chiefly to talk of 
living beings’ ?’ 

By December 1831, Lyell had come to the resolu- | 
tion to publish the chapters of his work which dealt 
with the changes going on in the organic world as 
a volume by itself. This second volume of the 
Principles he gracefully dedicated to his friend 
Broderip, who had rendered him such valuable assist- 
ance in all questions connected with Natural History. 

This volume appeared in January 1832, at the 
same time that a second edition of the first volume 
was also issued. The reception of the second volume 
by the public appears to have been not less favourable 
than that of the first. 

In March 1831, Lyell had accepted the Pro- 
fessorship of Geology in King’s College, London. 
In addition to his desire to aid in the work of 
scientific education, in which he had always taken so 
great an interest, Lyell seems to have felt that the 

J. BE. 5 


66 THE COMING [CH. 


task of presenting his views in a popular form would 
be aided by his having to expound them to a miscel- 
laneous audience. For two years, these lectures 
were delivered, and attracted much attention; the 
favourable impressions produced by them on a man of 
the world have been recorded by Abraham Hayward, 
and on more scientific thinkers by Harriet Martineau. 
The third volume of the Principles was not 
completed till a second edition of the second volume 
had been issued. This third volume, appearing in 
May 1833, dealt with the classification of the Tertiary 
strata, to which Lyell had devoted so much labour, 
studying conchology under Deshayes, and visiting all 
the chief Tertiary deposits of Europe for the collec- 
tion of materials. The application of the principles 
enunciated in the two earlier volumes to the un- 
ravelling of the past history of the globe, constituted 
the chief task undertaken in this part of the great 
work. But not a few controversial questions were 
dealt with, and the famous ‘metamorphic theory’ 
was advanced in opposition to the Wernerian hypo- 
thesis of ‘primitive formations.’ The volume was 
appropriately dedicated to Murchison, who had been 
Lyell’s companion in the famous Auvergne excursion, 
which had produced such an effect on his mind. 
Within a twelvemonth, a third edition of the 
whole work in four small volumes was issued, and in 
the end no less than twelve editions of the Principles 


vi] OF EVOLUTION 67 


of Geology were issued, in addition to portions 
separately published under the titles of Manual, 
Elements, and Student's Elements of Geology, of all 
of which a number of editions have appeared. Lyell 
was always the most painstaking and conscientious 
of authors. He declared ‘I must write what will be | 
read°’,’ and he spared no labour in securing accuracy 
of statement combined with elegance of diction. His 
father, a good classical and Italian scholar, had done 
much towards assisting him to attain literary ex- 
cellence, and at Oxford, where he took a good degree 
in classics, he was greatly impressed by the style of 
Gibbon’s writings, and practised both prose and 
poetic compositions with great diligence. 

Both Darwin and Huxley always maintained that 
the real charm and power of Lyell’s work are only to | 
be found in the first edition®, As new discoveries 
were made or more effective illustrations of his views 
presented themselves to his mind, passage after 
passage in the work was modified by the author 
or replaced by others; and the effects of these 
constant changes—however necessary and desirable 
in themselves—could not fail to be detrimental to 
the book as a work of art. He who would form a 
just idea of the greatness of Lyell’s masterpiece, 
must read the first edition, of course bearing in 
mind, all the while, the state of science at the time 
it was written. 

5—2 


CHAPTER VII 
THE INFLUENCE OF LYELL’S WORKS 


ALTHOUGH the Principles of Geology was received 
by the public with something like enthusiasm—due 
to the cogency of its reasoning and the charm of its 
literary style—there were not wanting critics who 
attacked the author on the ground of his heterodox 
views. It had come to be so generally understood, 
that every expression of geological opinion should, 
by way of apology, be accompanied by an attempt 
to ‘harmonise’ it with the early chapters of Genesis, 
that the absence of any references of this kind was 
asserted to be a proof of ‘infidelity’ on the part of 
the author. 

But Lyell’s sincere and earnest efforts to avoid 
exciting theological prejudice, and the striking 
illustrations, which he gave in his historical intro- 
duction, of the absurdities that had resulted from 
these prejudices in the past, were not without effect. 
This was shown in a somewhat remarkable manner 


CH. vil] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 69 


in 1831, when, in response to an invitation given to 
him, he consented to become a candidate for the 
Chair of Geology at King’s College, London, then 
recently founded. 

The election was in the hands of an Archbishop, 
two Bishops and two Doctors of Divinity, and Lyell 
relates their decision, as communicated to him, in 
the following words :— 


‘They considered some of my doctrines startling enough, but 
could not find that they were come by otherwise than in a straight- 
forward manner, and (as J appeared to think) logically deducible 
from the facts, so that whether the facts were true or not, or my 
conclusions logical or otherwise, there was no reason to infer that 
I had made my theory from any hostile feeling towards revela- 
tion ®)’ 

The appointment was, in the end, made with only 
one dissentient, and it is pleasing to find that Cony- 
beare, the most determined opponent of Lyell’s evolu- 
tionary views, was extremely active in his efforts in 
his support. The result was equally honourable to all 
parties, and affords a pleasing proof of the fact that 
in the half century which had elapsed since the 
persecution of Priestley and Hutton, theological 
rancour must have greatly declined. But while 
the reception of the Principles of Geology by the 
general public was of such a generally satisfactory 
character, Lyell had to acknowledge that his reasoning 
had but little effect in modifying the views of his 


70 THE COMING (cn. 


distinguished contemporaries in the Geological 
Society. 

The admiration felt for the author’s industry and 
skill, in the collection and marshalling of facts and 
of the observations made by him in his repeated 
travels, were eloquently expressed by the generous 
Sedgwick, as follows :— 


‘Were I to tell “the author” of the instruction I received from 
every chapter of his work, and of the delight with which I rose 
from the perusal of the whole, I might seem to flatter rather than 
to speak the language of sober criticism ; but I should only give 
utterance to my honest sentiments. His work has already taken, 
and will long maintain a distinguished place in the philosophic 
literature of this country %.’ 


Nevertheless, in the same address to the Geo- 
logical Society, in which these words were spoken, 
Sedgwick goes on to argue forcibly against the 
doctrine of continuity, and to assert his firm belief 
in the occurrence of frequent interruptions of the 
geological record by great convulsions. 

Whewell was equally enthusiastic with Sedgwick, 
concerning the value of the body of facts collected 
by Lyell, declaring that he had established a new 
branch of science, ‘Geological Dynamics’; but he 
also believed with Sedgwick, that the evolutionary 
doctrine was as obnoxious to true science as he 
thought it was to Scripture. 

These were the views of all the great leaders of 


vit] OF EVOLUTION 71 


geological science at that day, and in 1834, after the 
completion of the Principles, when a great discussion 
took place in the Geological Society on the subject 
of the effects ascribed by him to existing causes, 
Lyell says that ‘Buckland, De la Beche, Sedgwick, 
Whewell, and some others treated them with as 
much ridicule as was consistent with politeness in 
my presence,’ 

It is interesting to be able to infer from Lyell’s 
accounts of these days, that the sagacious De la 
Beche was beginning to weaken in his opposition to 
evolutionary views, and that Fitton and John Phillips 
were inclined to support him, but neither of them 
was ready to come forward boldly as the champions 
of unpopular opinions. John Herschel, who sym- 
pathised with Lyell in all his opinions, was absent 
at the Cape, Scrope was absorbed in the stormy 
politics of that day, and it was not till Darwin 
returned from his South American voyage in 1838, 
that Lyell found any staunch supporter in the fre- 
quent lively debates at the Geological Society. 

It is pleasing, however, to relate that this strong 
opposition to his theoretical teachings, did not lessen 
the esteem, or interfere with the friendship, felt for 
Lyell by his contemporaries. During all this time 
he held the office of Foreign Secretary to the Society, 
and in 1835 was elected President, retaining the office 
for two years. 


79 THE COMING [cn. 


The general feeling of the old geologists with 
respect to Lyell’s opinions was very exactly ex- 
pressed by Professor Henslow, when in parting from 
young Darwin on his setting out on his voyage, he 
referred to the recently published first volume of the 
Principles in the following terms :— 

‘Take Lyell’s new book with you and read it by 
all means, for it is very interesting, but do not pay 
any attention to it, except in regard to facts, for it is 
altogether wild as far as theory goes.’ 

(I quote the words as repeated to me by Darwin, 
in a conversation I had with him on August 7th, 1880, 
of which I made a note at the time. Darwin has 
himself referred to this conversation with Henslow 
in his autobiography ™.) 

Except in a few cases, this was the attitude 
maintained by all the old geologists who were Lyell’s 
contemporaries. Even as late as 1895 we find the 
amiable Prestwich protesting strongly against ‘the 
Fetish of uniformity®, and I well remember about 
the same time being solemnly warned by a geologist 
of the old school against ‘ poor old Lyell’s fads.’ 

It was not, indeed, till a new generation of geo- 
logists had arisen, including Godwin-Austen, Edward 
Forbes, Ramsay, Jukes, Darwin, Hooker and Huxley, 
that the real value and importance of Lyell’s teaching 
came to be recognised and acknowledged. 

The most important influence of Lyell’s great 


vit] OF EVOLUTION 73 


work is seen, however, in the undoubted fact that it 
inspired the men, who became the leaders in the 
revolution of thought which took place a quarter of 
a century later in respect to the organic world. 
Were I to assert that if the Principles of Geology 
had not been written, we should never have had the 
Origin of Species, I think I should not be going too 
far: at all events, I can safely assert, from several 
conversations I had with Darwin, that he would have 
most unhesitatingly agreed in that opinion. 

Darwin’s devotion to his ‘dear master’ as he 
used to call Lyell, was of the most touching character, 
and it was prominently manifested in all his geological 
conversations. In his books and in his letters he 
never failed to express his deep indebtedness to his 
‘own true love’ as he called the Principles of 
Geology. In what was Darwin’s own most favourite 
work, the Narrative of the Voyage of the Beagle, he 
wrote ‘T’o Charles Lyell, Esq., F.R.S., this second 
edition is dedicated with grateful pleasure, as an 
acknowledgment that the chief part of whatever 
scientific merit this Journal and the other works of 
the author may possess, has been derived from study- 
ing the well-known, admirable Principles of Geology.’ 

How Lyell’s first volume inspired Darwin with his 
passion for geological research, and how his second 
volume was one of the determining causes in turn- 
ing his mind in the direction of Evolution, we shall 


74 THE COMING [ CH. 


see in the sequel. In 1844, Darwin wrote to Leonard 
Horner how ‘forcibly impressed I am with the 
infinite superiority of the Lyellian School of Geology 
over the continental,’ he even says, ‘I always feel as 
if my books came half out of Lyell’s brain’ ; adding 
‘I have always thought that the great merit of the 
Principles was that it altered the whole tone of one’s 
mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never 
seen by Lyell one yet saw it partially through his 
eyes®,’ About the same time Darwin wrote, ‘I am 
much pleased to hear of the call for a new edition of 
the Principles: what glorious good that work has 
done®™!’ And in the Origin ef Species he gives his 
deliberate verdict on the book, referring to it as 
‘Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, 
which the future historian will recognise as having 
produced a revolution in Natural Science®,’ 

Darwin seemed always afraid, such was his 
sensitive and generous nature, that he did not 
sufficiently acknowledge his indebtedness to Lyell. 
He wrote to his friend in 1845: 


‘I have long wished not so much for your sake as for my own 
feelings of honesty, to acknowledge more plainly than by mere 
reference, how much I geologically owe you. Those authors, 
however, who like you educate people’s minds as well as teach 
them special facts, can never, I should think, have full justice 
done them except by posterity, for the mind thus insensibly 
improved can hardly perceive its own upward ascent.’ 


vit] OF EVOLUTION 75 


Very heartily, as I can bear witness from long 
intercourse with him, was this deep affection of 
Darwin reciprocated by the man who was addressed 
by him in his letters as ‘Your affectionate pupil.’ 
But a stranger who conversed with Lyell would have 
thought that he was the junior and a disciple; so 
profound was his reverence for the genius of Darwin. 

There can be no doubt that Lyell’s extreme 
caution in statement, and his candour in admitting 
and replying to objections, had much to do with his 
acquirement of that authority with general, no less 
than with scientific, readers, which he so long enjoyed. 
In his candour he resembled his friend Darwin ; but 
his caution was carried so far that, even after full 
conviction had entered his mind on a subject, he 
would still hesitate to avow that conviction. He was 
always obsessed by a feeling that there still mzght be 
objections, which he had not foreseen and met, and 
therefore felt it unsafe to declare himself. No doubt 
the peculiarly trying circumstances under which his 
work was written—a seemingly hopeless protest 
against ideas held unswervingly by teachers and 
fellow-workers—led to the creation in him of this 
habit of mind. 

Darwin, with all his candour, was of a far more 
sanguine and optimistic temperament than Lyell, and 
the difference between them, in this respect, often 
comes out in their correspondence. 


76 THE COMING (cH. 


Thus Darwin, from the horrors he had witnessed 
in South America, had come to entertain a most 
fanatical hatred of slavery—his abhorrence of which 
he used to express in most unmeasured terms. Lyell, 
in his travels in the Southern United States, was equally 
convinced of the undesirability of the institution ; 
but he thought it just to state the grounds on which 
it was defended, by those who had been his hosts in 
the Slave-states. Even this, however, was too much 
for Darwin, and he felt that he must ‘explode’ to 
his friend ‘How could you relate so placidly that 
atrocious sentiment’ (it was of course only quoted 
by Lyell) ‘about separating children from their 
parents; and in the next page speak of being 
distressed at the whites not having prospered: I 
assure you the contrast made me exclaim out. But 
I have broken my intention (that is not to write 
about the matter), so no more of this odious deadly 
subject.’ 

It was just the same in their mode of viewing 
scientific questions. Thus in 1838, while they were 
in the midst of the fierce battle with the ‘Old 
Guard’ at the Geological Society, Lyell wrote to his 
brother-in-arms as follows :— 

‘I really find, when bringing up my Preliminary Essays in 
Principles to the science of the present day, so far as I know it, 


that the great outline, and even most of the details, stand so 
uninjured, and in many cases they are so much strengthened by 


Vit] OF EVOLUTION 77, 


new discoveries, especially by yours, that we may begin to hope 
that the great principles there insisted on will stand the test of 
new discoveries”,’ 


To which the younger and more ardent Darwin 
warmly replied :— 


‘Begin to hope: why, the possibility of a doubt has never 
crossed my mind for many a day. This may be very unphilo- 
sophical, but my geological salvation is staked on it...... it makes 
me quite indignant that you should talk of hoping") 


When talking with Lyell at this time about the 
opposition of the old school of geologists to their 
joint views, Darwin said, ‘What a good thing it 
would be if every scientific man was to die at sixty 
years old, as afterwards he would be sure to oppose 
all new doctrines”. 

In conversations that I had with him late in life, 
Darwin several times remarked to me, that ‘he had 
seen so many of his friends make fools of themselves 
by putting forward new theoretical views in their old 
age, that he had resolved quite early in life, never to 
publish any speculative opinions after he was sixty.’ 
But both in conversation and in his writings he always 
maintained that Lyell was an exception to all such 
rules, seeing that at last he adopted the theory of 
Natural Selection in his old age, thus displaying the 
most ‘remarkable candour.’ 

All who had the pleasure of discussing geological 


78 THE COMING (cn. 


questions with Lyell will recognise the truth of the 
portrait drawn of his old friend by Darwin, about a 
year before his own death. 

He says :— 


‘His mind was characterised, as it appeared to me, by 
clearness, caution, sound judgment, and a good deal of originality. 
When I made a remark to him on Geology, he never rested until 
he saw the whole case clearly, and often made me see it more 
clearly than I had done before.’ 


And he sums up his admiration of the ‘dear old 
master’ in the words 


‘The science of Geology is enormously indebted to Lyell— 
more so, as I believe, than to any other man who ever lived”3.’ 


Alfred Russel Wallace is scarcely less emphatic 
than Charles Darwin himself in his expression of 
affection and admiration for Lyell, and his indebted- 
ness to the Principles of Geology. 


In his Autobiography, Wallace writes :— 

‘With Sir Charles I soon felt at home, owing to his refined 
and gentle manners, his fund of quiet humour, and his intense 
love and extensive knowledge of natural science. His great 
liberality of thought and wide general interests were also 
attractive to me; and although when he had once arrived at a 
definite conclusion, he held by it very tenaciously until a con- 
siderable body of well-ascertained facts could be adduced against 
it, yet he was always willing to listen to the arguments of his 
opponents, and to give them careful and repeated considera- 
tion”4,’ 


vit] OF EVOLUTION 79 


Of the influence of the Principles of Geology in 
leading him to evolution, he wrote : 


‘Along with Malthus I had read, and been even more deeply 
impressed by, Sir Charles Lyell’s immortal Principles of Geology ; 
which had taught me that the inorganic world—the whole surface 
of the earth, its seas and lands, its mountains and valleys, its 
rivers and lakes, and every detail of its climatic conditions—were 
and always had been in a continual state of slow modification. 
Hence it became obvious that the forms of life must have become 
continually adjusted to these changed conditions in order to 
survive. The succession of fossil remains throughout the whole 
geological series of rocks is the record of the change; and it 
became easy to see that the extreme slowness of these changes 
was such as to allow ample opportunity for the continuous 
automatic adjustment of the organic to the inorganic world, as 
well as of each organism to every other organism in the sam« 
area, by the simple processes of “variation and survival of the 
fittest.” Thus was the fundamental idea of the “origin of 
species” logically formulated from the consideration of a series of 
well ascertained facts”,’ 


Nor were the two men (who, like Aaron and Hur 
so steadily sustained the hands of Darwin in his long 
vigil), behind the two authors of Natural Selection 
themselves in their devotion to Lyell. How touching 
is Hooker’s tribute of affection on the death of his 
friend, ‘My loved, my best friend, for well nigh forty 
years of my life. To me the blank is fearful, for it 
never will, never can be filled up. The most generous 
sharer of my own and my family’s hopes, joys, and 


80 THE COMING (on. 


sorrows, whose affection for me was truly that of a 
father and brother combined”.” 

And Huxley speaking of Lyell, the day after his 
death said, ‘Sir Charles Lyell would be known in 
history as the greatest geologist of his time. Some 
days ago I went to my venerable friend, and put 
before him the results of the Challenger expedition. 
Nothing could then have been more touching than 
the conflict between the mind and the material body, 
the brain clear and comprehending all; while the 
lips could hardly express the views which the busy 
mind formed™,’ 

How well do I recollect my last visit to Lyell a 
day or two after this farewell interview with Huxley, 
the glow of gratitude which lighted up the noble 
features as with trembling lips he told me how 
‘Huxley had repeated his whole Royal Institution 
lecture at his bedside.’ 

Huxley was a most devoted student of Lyell. 
Speaking to his fellow geologists in 1869 he said, 
‘Which of us has not thumbed every page of the 
Principles of Geology?’ and writing in 1887 on the 
reception of the Orzgin of Species, he said :— 


‘I have recently read afresh the first edition of the Principles 
of Geology; and when I consider that this remarkable book had 
been nearly thirty years in everybody’s hands, and that it brings 
home to any reader of ordinary intelligence a great principle and a 
great fact—the principle, that the past must be explained by the 


vil] OF EVOLUTION 81 


present, unless good cause be shown to the contrary; and the 
fact, that, so far as our knowledge of the past history of life on © 
our globe goes, no such cause can be shown—I cannot but believe 
that Lyell, for others, as for myself, was the chief agent in 
smoothing the road for Darwin. For consistent uniformitarianism 
postulates evolution as much in the organic as in the inorganic 
world. The origin of a new species by other than ordinary 
agencies would be a vastly greater ‘catastrophe’ than any of those 
which Lyell successfully eliminated from sober geological specu- 
lation”®,’ 

How strongly Lyell had become convinced, as | 
early as 1832, of the truth and importance of the 
doctrine of Evolution—in the organic as well as in 
the inorganic world—in spite of his emphatic rejec- 
tion of the theory of Lamarck, we shall show in the 
next chapter. It was this conviction, as we shall see, 
which led to his friendly encouragement of Darwin 
in his persevering investigations and to his constant 
solicitude that the results of his friend’s labours 
should not be lost through delay in their publi- 
cation. 


CHAPTER VIII 


EARLY ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH THE DOCTRINE 
OF EVOLUTION FOR THE ORGANIC WORLD 


In studying the history of Evolutionary ideas, it 
is necessary to keep in mind that there are two 
perfectly distinct lines of thought, the origin and 
development of which have to be considered. 

Furst. The conviction that species are not im- 
mutable, but that, by some means or other, new 
forms of life are derived from pre-existing ones. 

Secondly. The conception of some process or 
processes, by which this change of old forms into 
new ones may be explained. 

Buffon, Kant, Goethe, and many other philosophic 
thinkers, have been more or less firmly persuaded of 
the truth of the first of these propositions ; and even 
Linnaeus himself was ready to make admissions in 
this direction. It was impossible for anyone who was 
convinced of the truth of the doctrine of continuity 
or evolution in the inorganic world, to avoid the 
speculation that the same arguments by which the 


oH. vii] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION ~ 83 


truth of that doctrine was maintained must apply 
also to the organic world. 

Hence we find that directly the Principles of 
Geology was published, thinkers, like Sedgwick and 
Whewell, at once taxed Lyell with holding that ‘the 
creation of new species is going on at the present 
day, and Lyell replied to the latter :— 


‘It was impossible, I think, for anyone to read my work and 
not to perceive that my notion of uniformity in the existing causes 
of change always implied that they must for ever produce an 
endless variety of effects, both in the animate and inanimate 
world®,? 


And to Sedgwick, Lyell wrote :— 


‘Now touching my opinion,’ concerning the creation of new 
species at the present day, ‘I have no right to object, as J really 
entertain it, to your controverting it; at the same time you will 
see, on reading my chapter on the subject, that I have studiously 
avoided laying down the doctrine dogmatically as capable of proof. 
I have admitted that we have only data for extinction, and I have 
left it to be inferred, instead of enunciating it even as my opinion, 
that the place of lost species is filled up (as it was of old) from 
time to time by new species. I have only ventured to say that 
had new mammalia come in, we could hardly have hoped to verify 
the fact®’ 


That Lyell was convinced of the truth of the 
doctrine of the evolution of species is shown by his 
correspondence with friends and sympathisers like 
Scrope and John Herschel. But he wrote: 

6—2 


84 THE COMING [CH. 


‘If I had stated....the possibility of the introduction or 
origination of fresh species being a natural, in contradistinction 
to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host of prejudices 
against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every step to 
any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these 
mysterious subjects **’ 


That Lyell was justified in not increasing the 
difficulties which would retard the reception of his 
views, by introducing matter, which he still regarded 
as of a more or less speculative character, I think 
everyone will be prepared to admit. Darwin had 
to contend with the same difficulty in writing the 
Origin of Species. To have included the question 
of the origin of mankind promnently in that work 
would have raised an almost insurmountable barrier 
to its reception. He says in his autobiography, 
‘I thought it best, in order that no honourable man 
should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that 
by the work “light would be thrown on the origin of 
man and his history.” It would have been useless 
and injurious to the success of the book to have 
paraded, without giving evidence, my conviction with 
respect to his origin®.’ 

Huxley and Haeckel have both borne testimony 
to the fact that Lyell, at the time he wrote the 
Principles, was firmly convinced that new species 
had originated by evolution from old ones. Indeed 
in a letter to John Herschel in 1836 he goes very far 


vir] OF EVOLUTION 85 


in the direction of anticipating the lines in which 
enquiries on the method of evolution must proceed, 
having even a prevision of the doctrine of memicry, 
long afterwards established by Bates and others. 
Lyell wrote :— 


‘In regard to the origination of new species, I am very glad 
to find that you think it probable that it may be carried on 
through the intervention of intermediate causes. I left this rather 
to be inferred, not thinking it worth while to offend a certain class 
of persons by embodying in words what would only be a specula- 
{1007.5 One can in imagination summon before us a small part 
at least of the circumstances that must be contemplated and 
foreknown, before it can be decided what powers and qualities a 
new species must have in order to enable it to endure for a given 
time, and to play its part in due relation to all other beings 
destined to coexist with it, before it dies out...... It may be seen 
that unless some slight additional precaution be taken, the species 
about to be born would at a certain era be reduced to too low a 
number. There may be a thousand modes of ensuring its 
duration beyond that time; one, for example, may be the 
rendering it more prolific, but this would perhaps make it press 
too hard upon other species at other times. Now if it be an 
insect it may be made in one of its transformations to resemble a 
dead stick, or a leaf, or a lichen, or a stone, so as to be somewhat 
less easily found by its enemies; or if this would make it too 
strong, an occasional variety of the species may have this 
advantage conferred on it; or if this would be still too much, 
one sex of a certain variety. . Probably there is scarcely a dash 
of colour on the wing or body of which the choice would be quite 
arbitrary, or which might not affect its duration for thousands of 
years. I have been told that the leaf-like expansions of the 
abdomen and thighs of a certain Brazilian Mantis turn from 


86 THE COMING (cn. 


green to yellow as autumn advances, together with the leaves of 
plants among which it seeks its prey. ~Now if species come in 
succession, such contrivances must sometimes be made, and such 
relations predetermined between species, as the Mantis, for 
example, and plants not then existing, but which it was foreseen 
would exist together with some particular climate at a given 
time. But I cannot do justice to this train of speculation in a 
letter, and will only say that it seems to me to offer a more 
beautiful subject for reasoning and reflecting on, than the notion 
of great batches of new species all coming in and afterwards 
going out at once*’ 


We have cited this very remarkable passage, as it 
affords striking evidence of how deeply Lyell had 
thought on this great question at a very early period. 
Nevertheless it is certain that when he wrote the 
second volume of the Principles, he had not been 
able to satisfy himself that any hypothesis of the 
mode of evolution, that had up to that time been 
suggested, could be regarded as satisfactory. 

The only serious attempt to explain the derivation 
of new species from old ones that came before Lyell 
was that of the illustrious Lamarck. 

Very noteworthy was the work of that old 
wounded French soldier, afflicted in his later years 
as he was by blindness. By his early labours, 
Lamarck had attained a considerable reputation 
as a botanist, and later in life he turned his attention 
to zoology, and then to palaeontology and geology. 
In zoology, he did for the study of invertebrate 


vu] OF EVOLUTION 87 


animals what his great contemporary Cuvier was 
accomplishing for the vertebrates ; but, with regard 
to the origin of species, he arrived at conclusions 
directly at variance with those of his distinguished 
rival. 

We are indebted to Professor Osborn® for calling 
attention to that remarkable, but little known work 
of Lamarck’s—Hydrogéologie—published in 1802, 
seven years before his Philosophie Zoologique ap- 
peared. This work is especially interesting as showing 
to how great an extent—as in the case of Darwin, 
Wallace and others—it was geological phenomena 
which played an important part in leading Lamarck 
to evolutionary convictions. “In Geology,” Professor 
Osborn writes, 


‘Lamarck was an ardent advocate of uniformity, as against 
the Cataclysmal School. The main principles are laid down in 
his Hydrogéologie, that all the revolutions of the earth are ex- 
tremely slow. “For Nature,” he says, “time is nothing. Itis never 
a difficulty, she always has it at her disposal; and it is for her 
the means by which she has accomplished the greatest as well as 
the least results *,”’ 


On the subject of subaerial denudation (the action 
of rain and rivers in wearing down the earth’s surface), 
Lamarck’s views were as clear and definite as those 
of Hutton himself; though it is almost certain that 
he could never have seen, or even heard of, the 
writings of the great Scottish philosopher. On some 


88 THE COMING (on. 


other questions of geological dynamics, however, it 
must be confessed that Lamarck’s views and specula- 
tions were rather crude and unsatisfactory. 

In his Philosophie Zoologique, published in the 
same year that Charles Darwin was born (1809), 
Lamarck brought forward a great body of evidence 
in favour of evolution, derived from his extensive 
knowledge of botany, zoology and geology. He 
showed how complete was the gradation between 
many forms ranked as species, and how difficult it 
was to say what forms should be classed as ‘varieties’ 
and what as ‘species.’ 

But when he came to indicate a possible method 
by which one species might be derived from another, 
he was less happy in his suggestions. He recognised 
the value of the evidence derived from the study of 
the races which have arisen among domestic animals, 
and from the crossing of different forms. But his 
main argument was derived from the acknowledged 
fact that use or disuse may cause the development 
or the partial atrophy of organs—the case of the 
‘blacksmith’s arm. Unfortunately some of the 
suggestions made by Lamarck, in this connexion— 
like that of the elongation of the giraffe’s neck to 
enable it to browse on high trees—were of a kind 
that made them very susceptible to ridicule. His 
theory was of course dependent on the admission that 
acquired characters were transmitted from parents to 


VIIF| OF EVOLUTION 89 


children, and in the absence of any suggestion of 
‘selection, it did not appeal strongly to thinkers on 
this question. 

Lyell first became acquainted with the writings 
of Lamarck in 1827. As he was returning from the 
Oxford circuit for the last time—having now resolved — 
to give up law and devote himself to geological work — 
exclusively—he wrote to his friend Mantell as 
follows :— 


‘TI devoured Lamarck en voyage...... his theories delighted me 
more than any novel I ever read, and much in the same way, for 
they address themselves to the imagination, at least of geologists 
who know the mighty inferences which would be deducible were 
they established by observations. But though I admire even his 
flights, and feel none of the odiwm theologicwm which some 
modern writers in this country have visited him with, I confess I 
read him rather as I hear an advocate on the wrong side, to know 
what can be made of the case in good hands. I am glad he has 
been courageous enough and logical enough to admit that his 
argument, if pushed as far as it must go, if worth anything, would 
prove that men may have come from the Ourang-Outang. But 
after all, what changes species may really undergo! How 
impossible will it be to distinguish and lay down a line, beyond 
which some of the so-called extinct species have never passed 
into recent ones. That the earth is quite as old as he supposes, 
has long been my creed, and I will try before six months are over 
to convert the readers of the Quarterly to that heterodox 
opinion *,’ 


Lyell was at that time at work on his review for 
the Quarterly of Scrope’s Central France, and was 


90 THE COMING (cH. 


also completing the ‘first sketch’ of the Principles. 
But it is evident that as the result of continued study 
of Lamarck’s book, Lyell found it, in spite of its 
fascination, to embody a theory which he could not 
but regard as unsound and not calculated to prove a 
solution of the great mystery of evolution. Accord- 
ingly when the second volume of the Principles was 
issued in 1832, it was found to contain in its opening 
chapters a very trenchant criticism of Lamarck’s 
theory. 

It is only fair to remember, however, that in 
1863, after Lyell had accepted the theory of Natural 
Selection he wrote to Darwin : 


‘When I came to the conclusion that after all Lamarck was 
going to be shown to be right, and that we must “go the whole 
orang” I re-read his book, and remembering when it was written, I 
felt I had done him injustice®’ 


It is interesting also to notice that Darwin, like 
Lyell, gradually came to entertain a higher opinion 
of the merit of Lamarck’s works, than he did on his 
first perusal of them. In 1844, Darwin wrote to 
Hooker, ‘Heaven forfend me from Lamarck non- 
sense !’ and in the same year he speaks of Lamarck’s 
book as ‘veritable rubbish, an ‘absurd though 
clever work®’.. When, after the publication of the 
Origin of Species, Lyell referred to the conclusions 
arrived at in that work as similar to those of 


vit] OF EVOLUTION 91 


Lamarck, Darwin expressed something like indig- 
nation, and he wrote to their ‘mutual friend’ 
Hooker, ‘I have grumbled a bit in my answer to 
him’ (Lyell) ‘at his always classing my book as a 
modification of Lamarck’s, which it is no more than 
any author who did not believe in the immutability 
of species™.’ In this case, as is so frequently seen in 
the writings of Darwin, it is evident that he attaches 
infinitely less importance to the enunciation of the 
idea of the evolution of species, than to the demon- 
stration of a possible mode of origin of that evolution. 
But that later in life Darwin came to take a more 
indulgent view of the result of Lamarck’s labours is 
shown by a passage in his ‘Historical Sketch’ 
prefixed to the Orzgin, in 1866. Lamarck, he says, 
‘first did the eminent service of arousing attention 
to the probability of all change in the organic world, 
as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of 
law and not of miraculous interposition *’ 

In the opinion of Dr Schwalbe and others there 
are indications in Darwin’s later writings that he had 
come into much closer relation with the views of 
Lamarck, than was the case when he wrote the 
Origin™. 

It is interesting, however, to note that Erasmus 
Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, published 
independently and contemporaneously, views on the 
nature and causes of evolution in striking agreement 


92 THE COMING [CH. 


with those of Lamarck; but perhaps the poetical 
form, in which he chose to embody his ideas, led to 
their receiving less attention than they deserved. 

As is now well known a number of writers during 
the earlier years of the nineteenth century published 
statements in favour of evolutionary views, and in 
several cases the theory of natural selection was 
more or less distinctly outlined. In addition to 
Geoffroy and Isidore Saint Hilaire and d’Omalius 
d'Halloy on the continent, a number of writers 
in this country, such as Dr Wells, Mr Patrick 
Matthew, Dr Prichard, Professor Grant, Dean 
Herbert, all expressed views in favour of evolution, 
even, in some cases, foreshadowing Natural Selection 
as the method. But these authors attached so little 
importance to their suggestions, that they did not 
even take the trouble to place them on permanent 
record, and it is certain that neither Lyell nor 
Darwin was acquainted with their writings at the 
time they were themselves working at the subject. 

There was indeed one work which, during the 
time that the Origin of Species was in preparation, 
attracted much popular attention. In 1844, Robert 
Chambers, who was favourably known as the author 
of some geological papers, wrote a book which 
excited a great amount of attention—the well-known 
Vestiges of Creation. This work was a very bold 
pronouncement of evolutionary views. Beginning 


vu] OF EVOLUTION 93 


with a statement of the nebular hypothesis of Kant 
and Laplace, it discussed the question of the origin 
of life—when life became possible on a cooling 
globe—and, arguing strongly in favour of the view 
that all plants and animals, as the conditions under 
which they existed change, had given rise to new 
forms, better adapted to their environment, insisted 
that the whole living creation had been gradually 
developed from the simplest types. 

Chambers published his book anonymously, being 
naturally afraid of the prejudices that would be 
excited against him—especially in his own country— 
by a work so outspoken, and it was not till after his 
death that its authorship was definitely known. 

The Vestiges of Creation met with very different 
receptions at the hands of the general public and 
from the scientific world, at the time it was published. 
The former were startled but captivated by its fear- 
less statements and suggestive lines of thought; 
while the latter were repelled and incensed by the 
want of judgment, too frequently shown, in accept- 
ing as indisputable, facts and experiments which 
really rested on a very slender basis or none at all. 
So popular was the book, however, that it passed 
through twelve editions, the last being published 
after the appearance of the Origin of Species. 

It is interesting to read Darwin’s judgment in 
later life on this once famous book ; he says :-— 


94. THE COMING OF EVOLUTION  [cn. vii 


‘The work from its powerful and brilliant style, though 
displaying in the earlier editions little accurate knowledge and a 
great want of scientific caution, immediately had a very wide 
circulation. In my opinion it has done excellent service in this 
country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, 
and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous 
views°,’ 


If we enquire what was the attitude of scientific 
naturalists towards the doctrine of Evolution, im- 
mediately before the occurrence of the events to be 
recorded in the next chapter, we shall find some 
diversity of opinion to exist. The late Professor 
Newton, an eniment ornithologist, has asserted that, 
at this period, many systematic zoologists and botanists 
had begun to feel great ‘searchings of heart’ as to 
the possibility of maintaining what were the generally 
prevalent views concerning the reality and immuta- 
bility of species. Huxley, however, declared that he 
and many contemporary biologists were ready to say 
‘to Mosaists and Evolutionists a plague to both your 
houses!’ and were disposed to turn aside from an 
interminable and fruitless discussion, to labour in the 
fields of ascertainable tact™, 


CHAPTER IX 


DARWIN AND WALLACE: THE THEORY OF 
NATURAL SELECTION 


CHARLES DARWIN was the grandson of Krasmus 
Darwin, who, as we have seen, arrived independently 
at conclusions concerning the origin of species very 
similar to those of Lamarck, and embodied his views 
in poems, which, at the time of their publication, 
achieved a considerable popularity. In the younger 
philosopher, however, imagination was always kept in 
subjection by a determination to ‘prove all things’ 
and ‘to hold fast that which is good’; though, in 
other respects, there were not wanting indications 
of the existence of hereditary characteristics in the 
grandson. 

Born at Shrewsbury and educated in the public 
school of that town, Charles Darwin from the first 
exhibited signs of individuality in his ideas and his 
tastes. The rigid classical teaching of his school did 
not touch him, but, with the aid of his elder brother, 
he surreptitiously started a chemical laboratory in a 


96 THE COMING (ou. 


garden tool-hcuse. From his earliest infancy he was 
a collector, first of trifles, like seals and franks, but 
later of stones, minerals and beetles. 

At the outset, only the desire to possess new 
things animated him, then a wish to put names to 
them, but, at a very early period, a passion arose for 
learning all he could about them. Thus when only 
9 or 10 years of age, he had ‘a desire of being able 
to know something about every pebble in front of 
the hall-door,’ and at 13 or 14, when he heard the 
remark of a local naturalist, ‘that the world would 
come to an end before anyone would be able to 
explain how’ a boulder (the ‘bell-stone’ of local-fame) 
came to be brought from distant hills—the lad had such 
a deep impression made on his mind, that he says in 
after life, ‘I meditated over this wonderful stone.’ 

At the age of 16, he was sent to Edinburgh 
University to prepare himself for the work of a 
doctor—the profession of his father and grandfather. 
But here his independence of character again asserted 
itself. He found most of the lectures ‘intolerably 
dull,’ so he occupied himself with other pursuits, 
making many friendships among the younger 
naturalists and doing a little in the way of biological 
research himself. 

That he was not altogether destitute of ambition 
in the eyes of his companions, however, is, I think, 
indicated by an amusing circumstance. In the 


1x] OF EVOLUTION 97 


library of Charles Darwin, which is carefully pre- 
served at Cambridge, there is a copy of Jameson’s 
Manual of Mineralogy, published in 1821, which 
was evidently used by the young student in his class- 
work at Edinburgh. In this a quizzical fellow-student 
has written ‘Charles Darwin Esq., M.D., F.R.S.’— 
mischievously adding ‘A.S.8.’! Even for geology, 
the science to which in all his after life he became so 
deeply devoted, young Darwin conceived the most 
violent aversion; and as he listened to Jameson’s 
Wernerian outpourings at Salisbury Crags, he 
‘determined never to attend to geology,’ registering 
the terrible vow ‘never as long as I lived to read a 
book on Geology, or in any way to study the science*®®”’ 

As it became evident that Charles Darwin would 
never make a doctor, his father, after two years’ trial, 
sent him to Cambridge with the object of his 
qualifying for a clergyman. But at Christ's College, 
in that University, he again took his own line—which 
was not that of divinity—riding, shooting and beetle- 
hunting being his chief delights. Nevertheless, at 
Cambridge as at Edinburgh, he seems to have shown — 
an appreciation for good and instructive society, and | 
in Henslow, the judicious and amiable Professor of 
Botany, the young fellow found such sympathy and . 
kindly help that he came to be distinguished as ‘the 
man who walks with Henslow™.’ 

After achieving a ‘pass degree, Darwin went 

J. E. 7 


98 THE COMING [CH. 


back to the University for an extra term, and by the 
advice of Henslow began to ‘think about’ the 
despised Science of Geology. He was introduced to 
that inspiring teacher, Sedgwick, with whom he 
made a geological excursion into Wales; but though 
he said he ‘worked like a tiger’ at geology, yet he, 
when he got the chance of shooting on his uncle’s 
estate, had to make the confession, ‘I should have 
thought myself mad to give up the first days of 
partridge-shooting for geology or any other science®.’ 

There is a sentence in one of the letters written 
at this time which suggests that, even at this early 
period in his geological career, Darwin had begun to 
experience some misgivings concerning the cata- 
strophic doctrines of his teachers and contemporaries. 
He says :— 


‘As yet I have only indulged in hypotheses, but they are 
such powerful ones that I suppose, if they were put into action 
but for one day, the world would come to an end.’ 


Was he not poking fun at other hypotheses 
besides his own ? 

Darwin’s real scientific education began when, 
after some hesitation on his father’s part, he was 
allowed to accept the invitation, made to him through 
his friend Henslow, to accompany, at his own expense, 
the surveying ship Beagle in a cruise to South 
America and afterwards round the world. In the 


1x] OF EVOLUTION 99 


narrow quarters of the little ‘ten-gun brig,’ he 
learned methodical habits and how best to economise 
space and time; during his long expeditions on 
shore, rendered possible by the work of a surveying 
vessel, he had ample opportunities for observing and 
collecting; and, above all, the absence of the 
distractions from quiet meditation, afforded by a 
long sea-voyage, proved in his case invaluable. 
Very diligently did he work, accumulating a vast 
mass of notes, with catalogues of the specimens he 
sent home from time to time to Henslow. He had 
received no careful biological training, and Huxley 
considered that the voluminous notes he made on 
zoological subjects were almost useless’, Very 
different was the case, however, with his geological 
notes. He had learned to use the blowpipe, and 
simple microscope, as well as his hammer and 
clinometer ; and the notes which he made concerning 
his specimens, before packing them up for Cambridge, 
were at the same time full, accurate and suggestive. 
Darwin has recorded in his autobiography the 
wonderful effect produced on his mind by the reading 
of the first volume of Lyell’s Pranciples—an effect 
very different from that anticipated by Henslow'.. 
From that moment he became the most enthusiastic 
of geologists, and never fails in his letters to insist on 
his preference for geology over all other branches of 
science. Again and again we find him recording 
7—2 


100 THE COMING [on 


observations that he thinks will ‘interest Mr Lyell’ 
and he says in another letter :— 

‘I am become a zealous disciple of Mr Lyell’s views, as 
known in his admirable book. Geologising in South America, 
I am tempted to carry parts to a greater extent even than he 
does 10% 

Before reaching home after his voyage, the 
duration of which was fortunately extended from two 
to five years, he had sent home letters asking to be 
elected a fellow of the Geological Society; and, 
immediately on his arrival, he gave up his zoological 
specimens to others and devoted his main energies 
for ten years to the working up of his geological 
notes and specimens. 

It may seem strange that the grandson of Erasmus 
Darwin should in early life have felt little or no 
interest in the question of the ‘Origin of Species,’ but 
such was certainly the case. He tells us in his 
autobiography that he had read his grandfather’s 
Zoonomia in his youth, without its producing any 
effect on him, and when at Edinburgh he says he 
heard his friend Robert Grant (afterwards Professor 
of Zoology in University College, London) as they 
were walking together ‘burst forth in high admira- 
tion of Lamarck and his views on Evolution ’—yet 
Darwin adds ‘I listened in silent astonishment, and 
as far as I can judge without any effect on my 
mind ?!%,’ 


1x] OF EVOLUTION 101 


The reason of this indifference towards his 
grandfather’s works is obvious. All through his life, 
Darwin, like Lyell, showed a positive distaste for all 
speculation or theorising that was not based on a 
good foundation of facts or observations. In this 
respect, the attitude of Darwin’s mind was the very 
opposite of that of Herbert Spencer—who, Huxley 
jokingly said, would regard as a ‘tragedy’—‘the 
killing of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact.’ 
Darwin tells us himself that, while on his first 
reading of Zoonomia he ‘greatly admired’ it— 
evidently on literary grounds—yet ‘on reading it a 
second time after an interval of ten or fifteen years, 
I was much disappointed ; the proportion of specula- 
tion being so large to the facts given. Huxley who 
knew Charles Darwin so well in later years said of 
him that :— 


‘He abhors mere speculation as nature abhorsa vacuum. He 
is as greedy of cases and precedents as any constitutional lawyer, 
and all the principles he lays down are capable of being brought 
to the test of observation and experiment!’ 


What then, we may ask, were the facts and 
observations which turned Darwin’s mind towards 
the great problem that came to be the work of his 
after life? I think it is possible from the study of 
his letters and other published writings to give an 
answer to this very interesting question. 


102 THE COMING [cn 


In November 1832, Darwin returned to Monte 
Video, from a long journey in the interior of the 
South American Continent, bringing with him many 
zoological specimens and a great quantity of fossil 
bones, teeth and scales, dug out by him with infinite 
toil from the red mud of the Pampas—these fossils 
evidently belonging to the geological period that 
immediately preceded that of the existing creation. 
The living animals represented in his collection were 
all obviously very distinct from those of Kurope— 
consisting of curious sloths, anteaters, and arma- 
dilloes—the so-called ‘Edentata’ of naturalists. 
And when young Darwin came to examine and 
compare his fossil bones, teeth and scales he found 
that they too must have belonged to animals 
(megatherium, mylodon, glyptodon, etc.) quite dis- 
tinct from but of strikingly similar structure to those 
now living in South America. What could be the 
meaning of this wonderful analogy? If Cuvier and 
his fellow Catastrophists were correct in their view 
that, at each ‘revolution’ taking place on the earth’s 
surface, the whole batch of plants and animals was 
swept out of existence, and the world was re-stocked 
with a ‘new creation, why should the brand-new 
forms, at any particular locality, have such a ‘ ghost- 
like’ resemblance to those that had gone before? It 
is interesting to note that, just at the same time, 
a Similar discovery was made with respect to Australia. 


1x] OF EVOLUTION 103 


In caves in that country, a number of bones were 
found which, though evidently belonging to ‘ extinct’ 
animals, yet must have belonged to forms resembling 
the kangaroos and other ‘pouched animals’ (mar- 
supials) now so distinctive of that continent. But of 
this fact Darwin was not aware until after his return 
to England in 1836. 

Among the objects sent from home, which awaited 
Darwin on his return to Monte Video, was the second 
volume of Lyell’s Principles, then newly published ; 
this book, while rejecting Lamarckism, was crowded 
with facts and observations concerning variation, 
hybridism, the struggle for existence, and many other 
questions bearing on the great problem of the origin 
of species. I think there can be no doubt that from 
this time Darwin came to regard the question of 
species with an interest he had never felt before. 

It is of course not suggested that, at this early 
date, Darwin had formed any definite ideas as to the 
mode in which new species might possibly arise from 
pre-existing ones or even that he had been converted 
to a belief in evolution. Indeed in 1877 he wrote 
‘When I was on board the Beagle I believed in the 
permanence of species’ yet he adds ‘but as far as 
I can remember vague doubts occasionally flitted 
across my mind.’ Such ‘vague doubts’ could scarcely 
have failed to have arisen when, as happened during 
all his journeys from north to south of the South 


104 THE COMING [CH. 


American Continent, he found the same curious 
correspondence between existing and late fossil forms 
of life again and again illustrated. 

But towards the end of the voyage, an even 
stronger element of doubt as to the immutability of 
species was awakened in his mind. When he came 
to study the forms. of life existing in the Galapagos 
Islands, off the west coast of South America, he was 
startled by the discovery of the following facts. 
Each small island had its own ‘fauna’ or assemblage 
of animals—this being very strikingly shown in the 
case of the reptiles and birds. And yet, though the 
species were different, there was obviously a very 
wonderful ‘family likeness’ to one another between 
the forms in the several islands and between them all 
and the animals living in the adjoining portion of the 
continent. Surely this could not be accidental, but 
must indicate relationships due to descent from 
common ancestors ! 

Charles Darwin returned to England in 1836, and 
at once made the acquaintance of Lyell. He says in 
one place, ‘I saw a great deal of Lyell’ and in another 
that ‘I saw more of Lyell than of any other man, 
both before and after my marriage.’ In one of his 
letters he writes, ‘You cannot conceive anything 
more thoroughly good natured than the heart-and- 
soul manner in which he put himself in my place and 
thought what would be best to do!’ For two 


Ix | OF EVOLUTION 105 


years Darwin was comparatively free from the 
distressing malady which clouded so much of his 
after life. And, during that time, he engaged very 
heartily with Lyell in those combats at the Geological 
Society (of which he had become one of the Secre- 
taries) in which their joint views concerning the truth 
of continuity or evolution in the inorganic world 
were defended against the attacks of the militant 
catastrophists. Darwin, however, did not act on the 
defensive alone, but brought forward a number of 
papers strongly supporting his new friend’s views. 

There can be little doubt that, while thus en- 
gaged, and in constant friendly intercourse with 
Lyell, Darwin must have felt—like other earnest 
thinkers on geology at that day—that the principles 
they were advocating of ‘continuity’ in the inorganic 
world must be equally applicable to the organic 
world—and thus that the question of evolution 
would acquire a new interest for him. 

But it was undoubtedly the revision of the notes 
made on board the Beagle, and the study of the 
specimens which had been sent home by him from 
time to time, that produced the great determining 
influence on Darwin’s career. All through the 
voyage he had endeavoured, with as much literary 
skill as he could command, to record with accuracy 
the observations he made, and the conclusions to 
which, on careful reflection, they seemed to point. 


106 THE COMING (CH. 


And on his return to England, these patiently written 
journals were revised and prepared for publication 
forming that charming work A Naturalist?s Voyage. 
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and 
Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage 
of HULLS. ‘ Beagle’ round the world. 

As Darwin, with the specimens before him, revised 
his notes, and reconsidered the impressions made on 
his mind, the ‘vague doubts’ he had entertained, 
from time to time, concerning the immutability of 
species, would come back to him with new force and 
cumulative effect. ‘I thensaw,’ he says, ‘how many facts 
indicated the common descent of species, and further, 
‘It occurred to me in 1837, that something might 
perhaps be made out on this question by patiently 
accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts 
which could possibly have any bearing on it. In 
July of that year, he opened his first note-book on 
the subject °°—the note-books being soon replaced by 
a series of portfolios, in which extracts from the 
various works he read, facts obtained by correspond- 
ence, the records of experiments and observation, 
and ideas suggested by constant meditation were 
slowly accumulated for twenty years. Mr Francis 
Darwin has published a series of extracts from the 
note-book of 1837, which amply prove that by this 
time Charles Darwin had become ‘a convinced 
evolutionist !”,’ 


Ix] OF EVOLUTION 107 


Fifteen months after this ‘systematic enquiry’ 
began, Darwin happened to read the celebrated work 
of Malthus On Population, for amusement, and this 
served as a spark falling on a long prepared train 
of thought. The idea that as animals and plants 
multiply in geometrical progression, while the 
supplies of food and space to be occupied remain 
nearly constant, and that this must lead to a ‘struggle 
for existence’ of the most desperate kind, was by no 
means new to Darwin, for the elder De Candolle, 
Lyell and others had enlarged upon it; yet the facts 
with regard to the human race, so strikingly pre- 
sented by Malthus, brought the whole question with 
such vividness before him that the idea of ‘ Natural 
Selection’ flashed upon Darwin’s mind. This hypo- 
thesis cannot be better or more succinctly stated 
than in Huxley’s words. 


‘All species have been produced by the development of 
varieties from common stocks: by the conversion of these, first 
into permanent races and then into new species, by the process 
of natural selection, which process is essentially identical with 
that artificial selection by which man has originated the races of 
domestic animals—the struggle for existence taking the place of 
man, and exerting, in the case of natural selection, that selective 
action which he performs in artificial selection!’ 


With characteristic caution, Darwin determined 
not to write down ‘even the briefest sketch’ of this 
hypothesis, that had so suddenly presented itself to 


108 THE COMING [CH. 


his mind. His habit of thought was always to give 
the fullest consideration and weight to any possible 
objection that presented itself to his own mind or 
could be suggested to him by others. Though he was 
satisfied as to the truth and importance of the principle 
of natural selection, there is evidence that for some 
years he was oppressed by difficulties, which I think 
would have seemed greater to him than to anyone 
else. In my conversations with Darwin, in after 
years, it always struck me that he attached an 
exaggerated importance to the merest suggestion of 
a view opposed to that he was himself inclined to 
adopt ; indeed I sometimes almost feared to indicate 
a possible different point of view to his own, for fear 
of receiving such an answer as ‘ What a very striking 
objection, how stupid of me not to see it before, I 
must really reconsider the whole subject.’ 

While a divinity student at Cambridge, Darwin 
had been much struck with the logical form of the 
works both of Euclid and of Paley. The rooms of 
the latter he seems to have actually occupied at 
Christ’s College and the works of the great divine 
were so diligently studied that their deep influence 
remained with him in after life’. 

I think it must have been the remembrance of 
the arguments of Paley on the ‘proofs of design’ in 
Nature, that seem in after life to have haunted 
Darwin so that for long he failed to recognise fully 


Ix] OF EVOLUTION 109 


that the principle of natural selection accounted not 
only for the adaptation of an organism to its environ- 
ment, but at the same time explains that divergence, 
which must have taken place in species in order to 
give rise to their wonderfully varied characters. 

It was not till long after he came to Down in 
1842, he tells us in his autobiography, that his mind 
freed itself from this objection. He says :— 


‘I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my 
carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me,’ 


and he compares the relief to his mind as resembling 
the effect produced by ‘Columbus and his egg?’ 
Some may think the ‘solution’ of Columbus was 
itself not a very satisfactory one ; and I am inclined 
to regard the difficulties of which Darwin records so 
sudden and dramatic a removal as more imaginary 
than real ! 

There can be no doubt that, as pointed out by the 
late Professor Alfred Newton'", there was among 
naturalists during the second quarter of the nine- 
teenth century a feeling of dissatisfaction with 
respect to current ideas concerning the origin of 
species, accompanied in many cases with one of 
expectation that a solution might soon be found. 
Others, however, despairingly regarded it as ‘the 
mystery of mysteries’ for which it was hopeless to 
attempt to find a key. There was, however, one 
man, who simultaneously with Darwin was meditating 


110 THE COMING [cn 


earnestly on the problem and who eventually reached 
the same goal. 

Alfred Russel Wallace was born thirteen years 
after Darwin, and a quarter of a century after Lyell. 
He did not possess the moderate income that permits 
of entire devotion to scientific research—an ad- 
vantage, the importance of which in their own cases, 
both Lyell and Darwin were always so ready to 
acknowledge. Wallace, after working for a time as a 
land-surveyor and then as a teacher, at the age of 26 
set off with another naturalist, H. W. Bates, on a 
collecting tour in South America—hoping by the sale 
of specimens to cover the expenses of travel. Like 
Lyell and Darwin, he was an enthusiastic entomologist, 
and had conceived the same passion for travel. He 
had, as we have already seen, been deeply impressed 
by reading the Principles of Geology, and after 
spending four years in South America undertook a 
second collecting tour, which lasted twice that time, 
in the Malay Archipelago. 

Before leaving England in 1848, Wallace had 
read and been impressed by reading the Vestiges of 
Creation, and there can be no doubt that from that 
period the question of evolution was always more or 
less distinctly present in his mind. While in Sarawak 
in the wet season, he tells us, ‘I was quite alone with 
one Malay boy as cook, and during the evenings and 
wet days I had nothing to do but to look over my 
books and ponder over the problem which was rarely 








Ix] OF EVOLUTION 111 


absent from my thoughts. He goes on to say that 
by ‘combining the ideas he had derived from his 
books that treated of the distribution of plants and 
animals with those he obtained from the great work 
of Lyell’ he thought ‘some valuable conclusions 
might be reached™’.’ Thus originated the very 
remarkable paper, On the Law which has regulated 
the Introduction of New Species, the main conclusion 
of which was as follows: ‘ Every species has come into 
existence coincident both in space and time with a 
pre-existing closely allied species. As Wallace has 
himself said, ‘This clearly pointed to some kind of 
evolution...but the how was still a secret.’ 

This essay was published in the Annals and 
Magazine of Natural History in September 1855 It 
attracted much attention from Lyell and Darwin and 
later from Huxley. One important result of it was 
that Darwin and Wallace entered into friendly 
correspondence. But although Darwin in his letters 
to Wallace informed him that he had been engaged 
for a long time in collecting facts which bore on the 
question of the origin of species, he gave no hint of 
the theory of natural selection he had conceived 
seventeen years before—indeed his friends Lyell and 
Hooker appear at that time to have been the only 
persons, outside his family circle, whom he had taken 
into his confidence. 

In the spring of 1858, Wallace was at Ternate in 
the North Moluccas, where he lay sick with fever, 


112 THE COMING [CH. 


and as his thoughts wandered to the ever-present 
problem of species, there suddenly recurred to his 
memory the writings of Malthus, which he had read 
twelve years before. Then and there, ‘in a sudden 
flash of insight’ the idea of natural selection pre- 
sented itself to his mind, and after a few hours’ 
thought the chief points were written down, and 
within a week the matter was ‘copied on thin letter- 
paper’ and sent to Darwin by the next post, with a 
letter to the following effect™*. Wallace stated that 
the idea seemed new to himself and he asked Darwin, 
if he also thought it new, to show it to Lyell, who 
had taken so much interest in his former paper. 
Little did Wallace think, in the absence of all 
knowledge on his part of Darwin’s own conclusions, 
what stir would be made by his paper when it arrived 
in England ! 

Wallace’s essay was entitled On the Tendency of 
Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original 
Type, and it is a singularly lucid and _ striking 
presentment, in small compass, of the theory of 
Natural Selection. 

Had these two men been of less noble and 
generous nature, the history of science might have 
been dishonoured by a painful discussion on a 
question of priority. Fortunately we are not called 
upon for anything like a judicial investigation of 
rival claims ; for Darwin as soon as he read the essay 
saw that—as Lyell had often warned him might be 


Ix | OF EVOLUTION lis 


the case—he was completely forestalled in the 
publication of his theory. The letter and paper 
arrived at a sad time for Darwin—he was at the 
moment very ill, there was ‘scarlet fever raging in 
his family, to which an infant son had succumbed 
on the previous day, and a daughter was ill with 
diphtheria™*.’ Darwin at once wrote hurriedly to 
Lyell enclosing the essay and saying : 


‘I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my 
MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better 
short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my 
chapters. Please return me the MS., which he does not say he 
wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course, at once write and 
offer to send to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it 
may amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if it ever have 
any value, will not be deteriorated, as all the labour consists in 
the application of the theory. I hope you will approve of 
Wallace’s sketch, that I may tell him what to say1%’ 


And Wallace—what was the line taken by him in 
the unfortunate complication that had thus arisen ? 
From the very first his action was all that is generous 
and noble. Not only did he, from the first, entirely 
acquiesce in the course taken by Lyell and Hooker, 
but, writing in 1870, when the fame of Darwin’s work 
had reached its full height, he said :— 


‘I have felt all my life and I still feel, the most sincere 
satisfaction that Mr Darwin had been at work long before me, 
and that it was not left for me to attempt to write The Origin of 
Species. I have long since measured my own strength and 


J. B. 8 


114. THE COMING OF EVOLUTION  [cH. 1x 


know well that it would be quite unequal to that task. For 
abler men than myself may confess, that they have not that 
untiring patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in 
using, large masses of facts of the most varied kind,—that wide 
and accurate physiological knowledge,—that acuteness in devising 
and skill in carrying out experiments,—and that admirable style 
of composition, at once clear, persuasive and judicial,—qualities 
which in their harmonious combination mark out Mr Darwin as 
the man, perhaps of all men now living, best fitted for the great 
work he has undertaken and accomplished "!6’ 


And fifty years after the joint publication of the 
theory of Natural Selection to the Linnean Society 
he said : 


‘7 was then (as often since) the “young man in a hurry,” he’ 
(Darwin) ‘the painstaking and patient student, seeking ever the 
full demonstration of the truth he had discovered, rather than to 
achieve immediate personal fame™”,’ 


And when he referred to the respective shares of 
Darwin and himself to the credit of having brought 
forward the theory of natural selection, he actually 
suggests as a fair proportion ‘twenty years to one 
week ’—those being the periods each had devoted to 
the subject"! 

Never surely was such a noble example of 
personal abnegation! We admire the generosity, 
though we cannot accept the estimate, for do we not 
know that, for at least half the period of Darwin’s 
patient quest, Wallace had spent in deeply pondering 
upon the same great question ? 


CHAPTER X 
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 


In the preceding chapter I have endeavoured to 
show how the hypothesis of Natural Selection 
originated in the minds of its authors, and must 
now invite attention to the way in which it was 
introduced to the world. What has been said earlier 
with respect to the labours and writings of Hutton, 
Scrope and Lyell may serve to indicate the great 
importance of the manner of presentment of new 
ideas—the logical force and literary skill with which 
they are brought to the notice of scientific con- 
temporaries and the world at large. 

There are some striking passages in Darwin’s 
naive ‘autobiography and letters’ which indicate the 
beginnings of his ambition for literary distinction. 
It must always be borne in mind in reading this 
autobiography, however, that it was not intended by 
Darwin for publication, but only for the amusement 
of the members of his own family. But the charming 
and unsophisticated self-revelations in it will always 
be a source of delight to the world. 

8—2 


_—T" 


116 THE COMING (cH. 


When making his first original observations among 
the volcanic cones and craters of St Jago in the 
Cape-de-Verde Islands, he says ‘It then first dawned 
on me that I might perhaps write a book on the 
geology of the different countries visited, and this 
made me thrill with delight!’ He tells us concern- 
ing his regular occupations on board the Beagle, that 
‘during some part of the day, I wrote my Journal 
and took much pains in describing carefully and 
vividly all that I had seen: and this was good 
practice,’ 

‘Later in the voyage’ he says ‘FitzRoy’ (the 
Captain of the Beagle) ‘asked me to read some of my 
Journal and declared it would be worth publishing, 
so here was a second book in prospect™ !’ 

Darwin’s first published writings were the extracts 
from his letters which Henslow read to the Philo- 
sophical Society of Cambridge, and those which 
Sedgwick submitted to the Geological Society. At 
Ascension, on the voyage home, a letter from 
Darwin’s sisters had informed him of the com- 
mendation with which Sedgwick had spoken to his 
father of these papers, and he wrote fifty years 
afterwards: ‘After reading this letter, I clambered 
over the mountains of Ascension with a bounding 
step, and made the volcanic rocks ring under my 
geological hammer.’ When in 1839 his charming 
Journal of Researches was published he records that 


x] OF EVOLUTION 117 


‘The success of this my first literary child always 
tickles my vanity more than that of any of my other 
books?’ 

As a matter of fact, no one could possibly be 
more diffident and modest about his actual literary 
performances than was Charles Darwin. I have heard 
him again and again express a wish that he possessed 
‘dear old Lyell’s literary skill’; and he often spoke 
with the greatest enthusiasm of the ‘clearness and 
force of Huxley’s style.’ On one occasion he men- 
tioned to me, with something like sadness in his 
voice, that it had been asserted ‘there was a want of 
connection and continuity in the written arguments,’ 
and he told me that, while engaged on the Origin, 
he had seldom been able to write, without inter- 
ruption from pain, for more than twenty minutes at 
a time ! 

Charles Darwin never spoke definitely to me 
about the nature of the sufferings that he so 
patiently endured. On the occasion of my first visit 
to him at Down he wrote me a letter (dated 
August 25th, 1880) in which, after giving the most 
minute and kindly directions concerning the journey, 
he arranged that his dog-cart should bring me to the 
house in time for a 1 o’clock lunch, telling me that to 
catch a certain train for return, it would be necessary 
to leave his house a little before 4 o’clock. But he 
added significantly :— 


118 THE COMING [on. 


‘But I am bound to tell you that I shall not be able to talk 
with you or anyone else for this length of time, however much I 
should like to do so—but you can read newspaper or take a stroll 
during part of the time.’ 


His constant practice, whenever I visited him, 
either at Down or at his brother’s or daughter’s house 
in London, was to retire with me, after lunch, to a 
room where we could ‘talk geology’ for about three 
quarters of an hour. At the end of that time, 
Mrs Darwin would come in smilingly, and though no 
word was spoken by her, Darwin would at once rise 
and beg me to read the newspaper for a time, or, if I 
preferred it, to take a stroll in the garden ; and after 
urging me to stay ‘if I could possibly spare the time,’ 
would go away, as I understood to lie down. On his 
return, about half an hour later, the discussion would 
be resumed where it had been left off, without further 
remark. 

Mr Francis Darwin has told us that the nature 
and extent of his father’s sufferings—so patiently 
and uncomplainingly borne—were never fully known, 
even to his own children, but only to the faithful 
wife who devoted her whole life to the care 
of his health. As is well known, Darwin seldom 
visited at other houses, besides those of immediate 
relatives, or the hydropathic establishment at which 
he sought relief from his illness. But he was in the 
habit of sometimes, when in London, calling upon 


x] OF EVOLUTION 119 


David Forbes the mineralogist (a younger brother of 
Edward Forbes) then living in York Street, Portman 
Square. The bonds of union between Charles Darwin 
and David Forbes were, first, that they had both 
travelled extensively in South America, and secondly, 
that both were greatly interested in methods of 
preserving and making available for future reference 
all notes and memoranda collected from various 
sources. David Forbes devoted to the purpose a 
large room with the most elaborate system of pigeon- 
holes, about which he told me that Darwin was 
greatly excited. He also mentioned to me that, on 
one or more occasions, while Darwin was in his 
house, pains of such a violent character had seized 
him that he had been compelled to lie down for a time 
and had occasioned his host the greatest alarm. 

It must always therefore be remembered, in 
reading Darwin’s works, what were the sad conditions 
under which they were produced. It seems to be 
doubtful to what extent his ill-health may be 
regarded as the result of an almost fatal malady, 
from which he suffered in South America, or as the 
effect of the constant and prolonged sea-sickness of 
which he was the victim duriny the five years’ voyage. 
But certain it is that his work was carried on under 
no ordinary difficulties, and that it was only by the 
exercise of the sternest resolution, in devoting every 
moment of time that he was free from pain to his 


120 THE COMING [cH. 


tasks, that he was able to accomplish his great 
undertakings. 

I do not think, however, that any unprejudiced 
reader will regard Darwin’s literary work as standing 
in need of anything like an apology. He always 
aims—and I think succeeds—at conveying his meaning 
in simple and direct language ; and in all his works 
there is manifest that undercurrent of quiet en- 
thusiasm, which was so strikingly displayed in his 
conversation. It was delightful to witness the keen 
enjoyment with which he heard of any new fact or 
observation bearing on the pursuits in which he was 
engaged, and his generous nature always led him to 
attach an exaggerated value to any discovery or 
suggestion which might be brought to his knowledge— 
and to appraise the work of others above his own. 

The most striking proof of the excellence and 
value of Darwin’s literary work is the fact that his 
numerous books have attained a circulation, in their 
original form, probably surpassing that of any other 
scientific writings ever produced—and that, in trans- 
lations, they have appealed to a wider circle of 
readers than any previous naturalist has ever 
addressed ! 

We have seen that the idea of Natural Selection 
‘flashed on’ Darwin’s mind in October 1838, and 
although he was himself inclined to think that his 
complete satisfaction with it, as a solution of the 


x] OF EVOLUTION 121 


problem of the origin of species, was delayed to a ; 
considerably later date, yet I believe that this was 
only the result of his over-cautious temperament, 
and we must accept the date named as being that of 
the real birth of the hypothesis. 

At this early date, too, it is evident that Darwin - 
conceived the idea that he might accomplish for the 
principle of evolution in the organic world, what 
Lyell had done, in the Principles, for the inorganic 
world. To cite his own words, ‘after my return to 
England it appeared to me that by following the 
example of Lyell in Geology, and by collecting all 
facts which bore in any way on the variation of 
animals and plants under domestication and nature, 
some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole 
subject?’ ‘In June 1842, he says, ‘I first allowed 
myself’ (how significant is the phrase!) ‘the satis- 
faction of writing a brief abstract of my theory in 
pencil in 35 pages*”4,’ 

For many years it was thought that this first 
sketch of Darwin’s great work had been lost. But 
after the death of Mrs Darwin in 1896, when the 
house at Down was vacated, the interesting MS. was 
found ‘hidden in a cupboard under the stairs which 
was not used for papers of any value but rather as 
an overflow of matters he did not wish to destroy.’ 
By the pious care of his son, this interesting MS.— 
hurriedly written and sometimes almost illegible— 


122 THE COMING [cn. 


has been given to the world, and it proves how 
completely Darwin had, at that early date, thought 
out the main lines of his future opus magnum. 

Darwin, however, had no idea of publishing his 
theory to the world until he was able to support it 
by a great mass of facts and observations. Lyell, 
again and again, warned him of the danger which 
he incurred of being forestalled by other workers ; 
while his brother Erasmus constantly said to him, 
‘You will find that some one will have been before 
you !%6 |? 

The utmost that Darwin could be persuaded to 
do, however, was to enlarge his sketch of 1842 into 
one of 230 pages. This he did in the summer of 
1844. His manner of procedure seems to have been 
that, keeping to the same general arrangement of 
the matter as he had adopted in his original sketch, 
he elaborated the arguments and added illustrations. 
Kach of the 35 pages of the pencilled sketch, as it 
was dealt with, had a vertical line drawn across it 
and was thrown aside. While the ‘pencilled sketch’ 
of 1842 was little better than a collection of memo- 
randa, which, though intelligible to the writer at the 
time, are sometimes difficult either to decipher or 
to understand the meaning of, the expanded work 
of 1844 was a much more connected and readable 
document, which Darwin caused to be carefully 
copied out. The work was done in the summer 


x] OF EVOLUTION 123 


months, while he was absent from home, and unable 
therefore to refer to his abundant notes—Darwin 
speaks of it, therefore, as ‘done from memory.’ 
The two sketches, as Mr Francis Darwin points 
out, were each divided into two distinct parts, though 
this arrangement is not adopted in the Origin of 
Species, as finally published. Charles Darwin on many 
occasions spoke of having adopted the Principles of 
Geology as his model. That work as we have seen 
consisted of a first portion (eventually expanded from 
one to two volumes), in which the general principles 
were enunciated and illustrated, and a second portion 
(forming the third volume), in which those principles 
were applied to deciphering the history of the globe 
in the past. I think that Darwin’s original intention 
was to follow a similar plan; the first part of his 
work dealing with the evidences derived from the 
study of variation, crossing, the struggle for exist- 
ence, etc., and the second to the proofs that natural 
selection had really operated as illustrated by the 
geological record, by the facts of geographical dis- 
tribution, and by many curious phenomena exhibited 
by plants and animals. Although this plan was 
eventually abandoned—no doubt wisely—when the 
Origin came to be written, we cannot but recognise 
in it another illustration of the great influence 
exercised by Lyell and his works on Darwin—an in- 
fluence the latter was always so ready to acknowledge. 


124 THE COMING [CH. 


On the 5th July 1844, Darwin wrote a letter to 
his wife in which he said, ‘I have just finished my 
sketch of my species theory. If, as I believe, my 
theory in time be accepted, even by one competent 
judge, it will be a considerable step in science. He 
goes on to request his wife, ‘in case of my sudden 
death’ to devote £400 (or if found necessary £500) 
to securing an editor and publishing the work. As 
editor he says ‘Lyell would be the best, if he would 
undertake it,’ and later, ‘ Lyell, especially with the aid 
of Hooker (and if any good zoological aid), would be 
best of all.” He then suggests other names from 
which a choice might be made, but adds ‘the editor 
must be a geologist as well as naturalist.’ Fortunately 
for the world Mrs Darwin was never called upon to 
take action in accordance with the terms of this 
affecting document?’ 

It must be remembered that, at this time, Darwin 
was hard at work on the three volumes of the 
Geology of the Beagle, and on the second and revised 
edition of his Jowrnal of Researches. This which he 
considered his ‘proper work’ he stuck to closely, 
whenever his health permitted. He had hoped to 
complete these books in three or four years, but 
they actually occupied him for fen, owing to constant 
interruptions from illness. His occasional neglect of 
this task, and indulgence in his ‘species work,’ as he 
called it, was always spoken of at this time by 


x] OF EVOLUTION 125 


Darwin as ‘idleness.’ And when the geological and 
narrative books were finished, Darwin took up the 
systematic study of the Barnacles (Cirripedia), both 
recent and fossil, and wrote two monumental works 
on the subject. These occupied eight years, two out 
of which he estimated were lost by interruptions 
from illness. So absorbed was he in this work, that 
his children regarded it as the necessary occupation 
of a man,—and when a visitor in the house was seen 
not to be so employed one of them enquired of their 
mother, ‘When does Mr —— do his Barnacles ?’ 
Huxley has left on record his view that in devoting 
so long a time to the study of the Barnacles Darwin 
‘never did a wiser thing, for it brought him into 
direct contact with the principles on which naturalists 
found ‘species!’ And Hooker has expressed the 
same opinion. 

During these years of labour in geology and 
zoology—interrupted only by the ‘hours of idleness’ 
—devoted to ‘the species question, Darwin, though 
leading at Down almost the life of a hermit, was 
nevertheless in frequent communication with two or 
three faithful friends who followed his labours with 
the deepest interest. Cautious as was Darwin him- 
self, he found in his life-long friend Lyell, a still more 
doubting and critical spirit, and it is clear from what 
Darwin says that he derived much help by laying 
new ideas and suggestions before him. The year 


126 THE COMING [CH. 


before Darwin’s death he wrote of Lyell, ‘When I 
made a remark to him on Geology, he never rested 
till he saw the whole case clearly, and often made me 
see it more clearly than I had done before.’ 

Lyell’s father was a botanist of considerable 
repute, the friend of Sir William Hooker and his 
distinguished son. Dr (now Sir Joseph) Hooker. 
While Darwin was writing his Journal of Researches, 
he handed the proof-sheets to Lyell with permission 
to show them to his father, who was a man of great 
literary judgment. The elder Lyell, in turn, showed 
them to young Mr Hooker, who was then preparing 
to join Sir James Ross, in his celebrated Antarctic 
voyage with H.M. ships Hrebus and Terror. Hooker 
was then working hard to take his doctor's degree 
before joining the expedition as surgeon, but he kept 
Darwin’s proof-sheets under his pillow, so as to get 
opportunities of reading them ‘between waking and 
rising. Before leaving England, however, Hooker in 
1839 casually met and was introduced to Darwin, and 
thus commenced a friendship which resulted in such 
inestimable benefits to science. Before sailing with 
the Antarctic expedition the young surgeon received 
from Charles Lyell, as a parting gift, ‘a copy of 
Darwin’s Journal complete’; and he tells us that 
the perusal stimulated in him ‘an enthusiasm in the 
desire to travel and observe.’ 

On Hooker's return from the voyage in 1843, 


x] OF EVOLUTION 127 


a friendly letter from Darwin commenced that re- 
markable correspondence, which will always afford 
the best means of judging of the development of 
ideas in Darwin’s mind. Hooker’s wide knowledge 
of plants—especially of all questions concerning 
their distribution—was of invaluable assistance to 
Darwin, at a time when his attention was more 
particularly absorbed by geology and zoology, while 
botany had not as yet received much attention from 
him. Hooker’s experience, gained in travel, his 
sound judgment and balanced mind made him a 
judicious adviser, while his caution and candour 
fitted him to become a trenchant critic of new sugges- 
tions, scarcely inferior in that respect to Lyell. 

Darwin does not appear to have made the 
acquaintance of Huxley till a considerably later date ; 
but we find the great comparative anatomist had in 
1851 already become so deeply impressed by Darwin, 
that he said in writing to a friend he ‘might be 
anything if he had good health.’ Huxley used to 
visit Darwin at Down occasionally, and I have often 
heard the latter speak of the instruction and pleasure 
he enjoyed from their intercourse. 

For many years of his life, Darwin used to come 
to London and stay with his brother or daughter for 
about a week at a time, and on these occasions— 
which usually occurred about twice in the year I 
believe—he would meet Lyell to ‘talk Geology, 


128 THE COMING (oH. 


Hooker for discussions on Botany, and Huxley for 
Zoology. 

For twenty years Darwin had ‘collected facts on 
a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to 
domesticated productions, by printed enquiries, by 
conversations with skilful breeders and gardeners, 
and by extensive reading.’ ‘When,’ he added, ‘I see 
the list of books of all kinds which I read and 
abstracted, including whole series of Journals and 
Transactions, I am surprised at my industry.’ In 
September 1854 the Barnacle work was finished and 
10,000 specimens sent out of the house and distributed, 
and then he devoted himself to arranging his ‘huge 
pile of notes, to observing and experimenting in 
relation to the transmutation of species.’ 

It was early in 1856 when this work had been 
completed, that, again urged by Lyell, he actually 
commenced writing his book. It was planned as a 
work on a considerable scale and, if finished, would 
have reached dimensions three or four times as 
great as did eventually the Origin of Species. 
Working steadily and continuously he had got as far 
as Chapter X, completing more than one half the 
book, when as he says Wallace’s letter and essay came 
‘like a bolt from the blue.’ 

Oppressed by illness, anxiety and perplexity, as 
we have seen that Darwin was at the time, he 
fortunately consented to leave matters—though with 


x] OF EVOLUTION _ 129 


great reluctance—in the hands of his friends Lyell 
and Hooker. ‘They took the wise course of reading 
Wallace’s paper at the Linnean Society on July Ist, 
1858, at the same time giving extracts from Darwin’s 
memoir written in 1844, and the abstract of a letter 
written by Darwin in 1857 to the distinguished 
American botanist, Asa Gray. This solution of the 
difficulty happily met with the complete approval of 
Wallace ; and, as the result of the episode, Darwin 
came to the conclusion that it would not be wise to 
defer full publication of his views, until the extensive 
work on which he was engaged could be finished, but 
an ‘abstract’ of them must be prepared and issued 
with as little delay as possible. 

For a time there was hesitation, as Darwin’s 
correspondence with Lyell and Hooker shows, be- 
tween the two plans of sending this ‘abstract’ to the 
Linnean Society in a series of papers or of making 
it an independent book. But Darwin entertained an 
invincible dislike to submitting his various conclusions 
to the judgment of the Council of a Society, and, in 
the end, the preparation of the ‘Abstract’ in the 
form of a book of moderate size, was decided on. 
This was the origin of Darwin’s great work. 

The sickness at Down had led to the abandonment 
of the house for a time, and, three weeks after the 
reading of the joint paper at the Linnean Society, 
we find Darwin temporarily established at Sandown, 

J. E. 9 


130 THE COMING [CH. 


in the Isle of Wight, where the writing of the Origin 
of Species was commenced. The work was resumed 
in September when the family returned to Down, and 
from that time was pressed forward with the greatest 
diligence. 

For the first half of the book, the task before 
Darwin was to condense, into less than one half their 
dimensions, the chapters he had already written for 
the large work as originally projected. But for the 
second half of the book, he had to expand directly 
from the essay of 1844. 

So closely did Darwin apply himself to the work, 
that, by the end of March 28th, 1859, he was able to 
write to Lyell telling him that he hoped to be ready 
to go to press early in May, and asking advice about 
publication : he says, ‘My Abstract will be about five 
hundred pages of the size of your first edition of the 
Elements of Geology. Lyell introduced Darwin to 
John Murray, who had issued all his own works, and 
the present representative of that publishing firm 
has placed on record a very interesting account of 
the ever thoughtful and considerate relations between 
Darwin and his publishers, which were maintained to 
the end?*?, 

The MS. of the book seems to have been 
practically finished early in May, and Darwin’s 
health then broke down for a time, so completely 
that he had to retire to a hydropathic establishment. 


x] OF EVOLUTION 131 


By June 21st he was able to write to Lyell ‘I am 
working very hard, but get on slowly, for I find that 
my corrections are terrifically heavy, and the work 
most difficult to me. I have corrected 130 pages, 
and the volume will be about 500. I have tried my 
best to make it clear and striking, but very much 
fear that I have failed ; so many discussions are and 
must be very perplexing. J have done my best. If 
you had all my materials, | am sure you would have 
made a splendid book. I long to finish, for I am 
certainly worn out’*.’ On September 10th the last 
proof was corrected and the preparation of the 
index commenced. At the meeting of the British 
Association in Aberdeen, Lyell made the important 
announcement of the approaching publication of the - 
great work. On November 24th the book was issued, 
1250 copies having been printed, and Darwin wrote 
to Murray, ‘I am infinitely pleased and proud at the 
appearance of my child.’ The edition was sold out 
in a day, and was followed early in the next year 
by the issue of 3000 copies ; and untold thousands 
have since appeared. 

The writing of such a work as the Origin of 
Species, in so short a time—especially taking into 
consideration the condition of its author’s health— 
was a most remarkable feat. It would, of course, 
not have been possible but for the fact that Darwin’s 
mind was completely saturated with the subject, and 

9—2 


132 THE COMING (cn. 


that he had command of such an enormous body 
of methodically arranged notes. He showed the 
greatest anxiety to convince his scientific contem- 
poraries, and at the same time to make his meaning 
clear to the general reader. With the former object, 
both MS. and printed proofs were submitted to the 
criticism of Lyell and Hooker; and the latter end 
was obtained by sending the MS. to a lady friend, 
Miss G. Tollet—she, as Darwin says ‘being an 
excellent judge of style, is going to look out errors 
for me. Finally the proofs of the book were 
carefully read by Mrs Darwin herself. 

The splendid success achieved by the work is 
a matter of history. Its clearness of statement and 
candour in reasoning pleased the general public; 
critics without any profound knowledge of natural 
history were beguiled into the opinion that they 
understood the whole matter! and, according to 
their varying tastes, indulged in shallow objection 
or slightly offensive patronage. The fully-anticipated, 
theological vituperation was of course not lacking, 
but most of the ‘replies’ to Darwin’s arguments 
were ‘lifted’ from the book itself, in which objections 
to his views were honestly stated and candidly con- 
sidered by the author. 

The best testimony to the profound and _far- 
reaching character of the scientific discussions of 
the Origin of Species is found in the fact that both 


x] OF EVOLUTION 133 


Hooker and Huxley, in spite of their wide knowledge 
and long intercourse with Darwin, found the work, 
so condensed were its reasonings, a ‘ very hard book’ 
to read, one on which it was difficult to pronounce 
a judgment till after several perusals ! 

It would be idle to speculate at the present day 
whether the cause of Evolution would have been 
better served by the publication, as Darwin at one 
time proposed, of a ‘Preliminary Essay,’ like that of 
1844, or by the great work, which had been com- 
menced and half completed in 1858, rather than by 
the ‘abstract,’ in which the theory of Natural Selection 
was in the end presented to the world. Probably 
the more moderate dimensions of the Origin of 
Species made it far better suited for the general 
reader ; while the condensation which was necessitated 
did not in the end militate against its influence with 
men of science. It will I think be now generally 
conceded that the great success of this grand work 
was fully deserved. A subject of such complexity as 
that which it dealt with could only be adequately 
discussed in a manner that would demand careful 
attention and thought on the part of the reader ; 
and Darwin’s well-weighed words, carefully balanced 
sentences, and guarded reservations are admirably 
adapted to the accomplishment of the difficult task 
he had undertaken. The Origin of Species has been 
read by the millions with pleasure, and, at the same 


134 THE COMING [CH. 


time, by the deepest thinkers of the age with 
conviction. 

It is scarcely possible to refer to the literary style 
of Darwin’s work without a reference to a misconcep- 
tion arising from that very candid analysis of his 
characteristics which he wrote for the satisfaction of 
his family, but which has happily been given to the 
world by his son. In his early life Darwin was 
exceedingly fond of music, and took such delight in 
good literature, especially poetry, that when on his 
journeys in South America he found himself able to 
carry only one book with him, the work chosen was 
the poems of Milton—the former student of his own 
Christ’s College, Cambridge. But towards the end 
of his life, Darwin had sadly to confess that he found 
that he had quite lost the capacity of enjoying either 
music or the noblest works of literature. 

Some have argued that Darwin’s scientific labours 
must have actually proved destructive to his artistic 
and literary tastes, and have even gone so far as to 
assert—in spite of numerous examples to the con- 
trary—that there is a natural antithesis between the 
mental conditions that respectively favour scientific 
and artistic excellence. 

But I think there is a very simple explanation of 
the loss by Darwin of his powers of enjoyment of 
music and poetry, a loss which he evidently greatly 
deplored. His scientific undertaking was so gigantic, 


x] OF EVOLUTION 135 


and, at the same time, his health was so broken and 
precarious, that he felt his only chance of success lay 
in utilizing, for the tasks before him, every moment 
that he was free from acute suffering and retained 
any power of working. Consequently, when the self- 
imposed task of each day was completed, he found 
himself in a state of mental collapse. Now to 
appreciate the beauties of fine music or the work of 
a great writer certainly demands that the mind 
should be fresh and unjaded, whereas, at the only 
times Darwin had for relaxation, he was quite unfitted 
for these higher delights. We are not surprised then 
to learn that he sought and found relief in listening to 
his wife’s reading of some pleasant novel or in the 
nightly game of backgammon, as the only means of 
resting his wearied brain. 

No one who had the privilege of conversing with 
Darwin in his later years can doubt of his having 
retained to the end the full possession of his refined 
tastes as well as his great mental powers. His love 
for and sympathy with every movement tending to 
progress—especially in the scientific and educational 
world—his devotion to his friends, with no little 
indulgence of indignation for what he thought false 
or mean in others, these were his conspicuous 
characteristics, and they were combined with a 
gentle playfulness and sense of humour, which made 
him the most delightful and loveable of companions. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN'S WORKS 


In two essays ‘On the Coming of Age of the Origin 
of Species‘, and ‘On the Reception of the Origin of 
Species’, published in 1880 and 1887 respectively, 
Huxley has discussed the course of events following 
the publication of Darwin’s great work, he having 
the advantage of being one of the chief actors in 
those events. There is a striking parallelism between 

he manner that the Principles of Geology had been 
received thirty years earlier, and the way that the 
Origin of Species was met, both by Darwin’s scientific 
contemporaries and the reading public. 

At the outset, as we have already intimated, 
Lyell and Darwin were equally fortunate, in that 
each found a critic, in one of the chief organs of 
public opinion, who was at the same time both com- 
petent and sympathetic. The story of the lucky 
accident by which this came about in Darwin’s case 
has been told by Huxley himself}, 


‘The Origin was sent to Mr Lucas, one of the staff of the 
Times writers at that time, in what was I suppose the ordinary 


cH. XI] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 137 


course of business. Mr Lucas, though an excellent journalist,... 
was as innocent of any knowledge of science as a babe, and 
bewailed himself to an acquaintance on having to deal with such 
a book. Whereupon, he was recommended to ask me to get him 
out of the difficulty, and he applied to me accordingly, explaining, 
however, that it would be necessary for him formally to adopt 
anything I might be disposed to write, by prefacing it with two 
or three paragraphs of his own.’ 

‘I was too anxious to seize upon the opportunity thus 
offered of giving the book a fair chance with the multitudinous 
readers of the Times, to make any difficulty about conditions; 
and being then very full of the subject, I wrote the article faster, 
I think, than I ever wrote anything in my life, and sent it to 
Mr Lucas who duly prefixed his opening sentences *,’ 


Many journalists, however, were less conscientious 
than Mr Lucas, and most of the other early notices of 
the book were pretty equally divided between undis- 
criminating praise of it as a novelty and foolish 
reprobations of its ‘wickedness.’ 

It was fortunate that Darwin followed the strong 
advice given to him by Lyell, and did not attempt to 
reply to the adverse criticisms ; for the only effect of 
these was to arouse curiosity and thus to increase the 
circulation of the book. 

Although Darwin had wisely avoided the danger 
of exciting prejudice against his work by definitely 
applying the theory of Natural Selection to the case 
of man—simply remarking, in order to avoid the 
charge of concealing his views, that ‘light would be 


138 THE COMING [OH. 


thrown on the origin of man and his history ’—yet 
friends and foes alike at once drew what was the 
necessary corollary from the theory. It is as amus- 
ing, as it is surprising at the present day, to recall 
the storm of prejudice which was excited. At the 
British Association Meeting at Oxford in 1860, after 
an American professor had indignantly asked the 
question, ‘Are we a fortuitous concourse of atoms ?’ 
as a comment on Darwin’s views, Dr Samuel Wilber- 
force, the Bishop of Oxford, ended a clever but 
flippant attack on the Origin by enquiring of Huxley, 
who was present as Darwin’s champion, if it ‘was 
through his grandfather or his grandmother that he 
claimed his descent from a monkey ?’ 

Huxley made the famous and well-deserved re- 
tort :— 


‘I asserted—and I repeat—that a man has no reason to be 
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an 
ancestor whom I should feel ashamed in recalling, it would rather 
be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who not 
content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into 
scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only 
to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention 
of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions 
and skilled appeals to religious prejudice?*®,’ 


The violent attack on Darwin’s views by the 
once-famous Bishop of Oxford was outdone, a few 
years later, by an even more absurd outburst on the 


x1] OF EVOLUTION 139 


part of Benjamin Disraeli, who—after stigmatising 
Darwinism as the question ‘Is man an ape or an 
angel ?’—declared magniloquently to the episcopal 
chairman, ‘My Lord, I am on the side of the angels!’ 

But in spite of attacks like these and numerous 
bitter pasquinades and comic cartoons—perhaps to 
some extent in consequence of them—Darwin’s views 
became widely known and eagerly discussed, so that 
the circulation of the Origin of Species went up by 
leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, as Huxley said, 
‘years had to pass away before misrepresentation, 
ridicule and denunciation, ceased to be the most 
notable constituents of the multitudinous criticisms 
of his work which poured from the press.’ 

Among his contemporary men of science Darwin 
could at first count few converts. Hooker, whose 
candid and valuable criticisms of his friend’s work 
had been continued up to the very end during its 
composition, did an eminent service to the cause 
of Evolution by publishing, almost simultaneously 
with the Origin of Species, his splendid memoir on 
The Flora of Austraha, tts Origin, Affinities, and 
Distribution, in which similar views were, not ob- 
scurely, indicated. Of Lyell, Darwin’s other friend 
and counsellor, Huxley justly says: 

‘Lyell, up to that time a pillar of the antitransmutationists 


(who regarded him, ever afterwards, as Pallas Athene may have 
looked at Dian, after the Endymion affair), declared himself 


140 THE COMING (cH. 


a Darwinian, though not without putting in a serious caveat. 
Nevertheless, he was a tower of strength and his courageous stand 
for truth as against consistency, did him infinite honour?” 


Huxley himself accepted the theory of Natural 
Selection—but not without some important reserva- 
tions—these, however, did not prevent him from 
becoming its most ardent and successful champion. 
Darwin used to acknowledge Huxley’s great service 
to him in undertaking the defence of the theory— 
a defence which his own hatred of controversy and 
the state of his health made him unwilling to under- 
take—by laughingly calling him ‘my general agent !’ 
while Huxley himself in replying to the critics, 
declared that he was ‘ Darwin’s bulldog.’ 

Although, at first, Darwin was able to enumerate 
less than a dozen naturalists who were prepared to 
accept his views, while influential leaders of thought 
in science—like Richard Owen in this country and 
Louis Agassiz in America—were bitterly opposed to 
them, the theory gradually obtained supporters es- 
pecially among the younger cultivators of botany, 
zoology and geology. 

It is evident that Darwin for some time regarded 
his ‘abstract,’ as he called the Origin of Species, as 
only a temporary expedient—one to be superseded 
by the publication of the much more extended work, 
designed and commenced long before. Although the 
Origin was only published late in November 1859, 


xt] OF EVOLUTION 141 


and he was called upon immediately to prepare a 
second edition, we find that on January Ist, 1860, 
Darwin began to arrange his materials for dealing with 
the first great division of his subject, ‘the variation 
of animals and plants under domestication.’ So 
numerous and important were his notes and records 
of experiments, however, that he soon found that to 
expand the whole of the ‘abstract,’ on the same scale, 
would be an impossible task for any one man, however 
able and diligent. Unwilling that the results of 
some of his special researches should be lost, he 
wisely determined to issue them as separate books. 
The first of these to appear was that on the Fer- 
tilisation of Orchids, a beautiful illustration of the 
relation of insects to flowers in producing crossing. 
He had been more than twenty years working and 
experimenting on this subject, his interest in it having 
been quickened by having read an almost forgotten 
book of the botanist Sprengel. Almost at the same 
time, and in following years, he wrote papers for the 
Linnean Society on dimorphic and trimorphic forms 
of flowers, and their bearing on the question of cross- 
fertilisation. These papers were the foundation of 
his well-known work, The Different Forms of Flowers 
on Plants of the same Species. In the same way, 
a paper read in 1864 to the Linnean Society was 
subsequently expanded into The Movements and 
Habits of Climbing Plants. 


142 THE COMING [CH. 


Owing to delays caused by the preparation and 
publication of these books and frequent interruptions 
from sickness, the work on variation did not appear 
till 1868. It was a very extensive piece of work in 
two volumes, and, at its end, Darwin tentatively 
propounded a hypothesis to account for the facts 
of Heredity and Variation to which he gave the 
name of ‘ pangenesis.’ 

Charles Darwin had reached the age of fifty, when 
he wrote the Origin of Species. At a very early 
period in his career, he had resolved that he would 
never start a new theory or revise an old one after 
he was sixty; as he used laughingly to say, ‘I have 
seen too many of my friends make fools of themselves 
by doing that.’ But as he approached this ‘ fatal age,’ 
one more subject of a theoretical and highly con- 
troversial nature remained to be dealt with, namely, 
the question of the application of the theory of 
natural selection to man, both as regards his physical 
structure and his intellectual and moral charac- 
teristics. 

Darwin tells us that in 1837 or ’38, as soon as he 
had become ‘convinced that species were mutable 
productions, he ‘could not avoid the belief that man 
must come under the same law” From that time, 
he began collecting facts bearing on the question. 
As each of his children was born, he examined closely 
the signs of dawning intelligence, and made notes of 


xt] OF EVOLUTION 143 


the manner in which new sensations and passions were 
exhibited by them. His dog and other animals, for 
whom he always showed the greatest fondness, were 
closely watched with the object of noting correspond- 
ences between their mental and moral processes and 
their modes of exhibiting them and our own; while 
visits were made by him to the Zoological Gardens 
with the same object. By reading and correspondence 
also, an enormous mass of notes was collected, and on 
February 4th, 1868, having seen his great work on 
Variation under Domestication published, Darwin 
was able to make the entry in his diary, ‘Began 
work on Man.’ 

As was usual with most of his works, Darwin | 
underestimated the time required to complete it. | 
Through all the years 1867—’68, ’69 and ’70 we find 
the entries in his diary ‘working at Descent of Man, 
and only early in the year 1871 was the book finished. 
His original plan of compressing his notes on the 
expression of the Emotions into a chapter at the end 
of the book proved to be impracticable, and the 
material was reserved for a new work. This work, 
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 
was commenced directly the Descent 0f Man was out 
of hand, a rough copy was finished by April 27th, 
1871, but the last proofs were not corrected till August 
23rd, 1873. 

In dealing with the question of the origin of the 


144 THE COMING [CH. 


human race, Darwin was led to propound his views 
concerning Sexual selection, the results of the pre- 
ferences shown by males and females, respectively, 
not only among mankind, but in various other animals. 
It was with respect to some of the conclusions con- 
tained in this work that Wallace found himself unable 
to follow Darwin. Wallace maintained that while 
man’s body could have been developed by Natural 
Selection, his intellectual and moral nature must 
have had a different origin. He also declined to 
adopt the theory of sexual selection, so far as it 
depends on preferences exhibited by females for 
beauty in the males. Wallace, however, in some 
respects has always been disposed to attach more 
importance to Natural Selection, as the greatest, if 
not the only factor in evolution, than Darwin himself. 

It will be seen that although Darwin had in all 
probability thought out all his important theoretical 
conclusions before 1869, when he reached the ‘fatal 
age, yet, owing to various delays, the books, in 
which he embodied his views, had not all appeared 
till more than four years later. 

Lyell, who was a convinced evolutionist before the 
publication of the Principles of Geology, as is shown 
by his letters,—and the fact is strongly insisted on 
both by Huxley and Haeckel'*!,—was slow in coming 
into complete agreement with Darwin concerning the 
theory of Natural Selection. While he followed his 


xt] OF EVOLUTION 145 


friend’s investigations with the deepest interest, his 
less sanguine nature led him often to despair of the 
possibility of solving ‘the mystery of mysteries.’ As 
Darwin wrote only a year before his own death, Lyell | 
‘would advance all possible objections to my sugges- 
tions, and even after these were exhausted would 
long remain dubious,’ It is evident from the cor- 
respondence that Darwin was at times tempted to 
become impatient with the friend, for whose advocacy 
of his views he so deeply longed. Fourteen years 
after the publication of the Origin of Species, how- 
ever, Lyell, in his Antiquity of Man, gave in his 
adhesion to Darwin’s theory but, even then, not in 
the unqualified manner that the latter desired. Yet 
I have reason to know that some years before his 
death, Lyell was able to assure his friend of his \ 
complete agreement, and Darwin, six years after the | 
loss of his friend, wrote, ‘His candour was highly 
remarkable. He exhibited this by becoming a con- 
vert to the Descent theory, though he had gained 
much fame by opposing Lamarck’s views, and this 
after he had grown old.’ Darwin adds that Lyell, 
referring to the ‘fatal age’ of sixty, said ‘he hoped 
that now he might be allowed to live?!’ 

When I first came into personal relations with 
Darwin, after the death of Lyell in 1875, he was in 
the habit of deprecating any idea of his writing on 
theoretical questions. He used to talk of ‘playing 

J. E, 10 


146 THE COMING [CH. 


with plants and such things,’ and undoubtedly derived 
the greatest pleasure from his ingenious experimental 
researches. The result of this ‘play’ in which Darwin 
took such delight is seen in his books on the Power 
of Movement in Plants and Insectivorous Plants ; 
full of the records of ingenious experiments and 
patient observation. 

It was a great relief to Darwin that his friend 
Wallace was able in 1871 to undertake the prepara- 
tion of a work on The Geographical Distribution of 
Ammals, for, on many points, the views held by 
Wallace on this subject were more in accordance 
with Darwin’s own, than were those of Lyell and 
Hooker. Nevertheless, on all questions connected 
with the geographical distribution of plants, and the 
causes by which they were brought about, Darwin 
always expressed the fullest confidence in Hooker's 
judgment, and the greatest satisfaction with his 
results. 

With regard to another great division of his work, 
that dealing with the imperfection, but yet great 
value, of the geological record, Darwin was always 
anxious, when I met him, to learn of any new dis- 
coveries. But he felt that he had done all that was 
possible in his outline of the subject in the Origin, 
and that he must leave to palaeontologists all over 
the world the filling in of these outlines. So great 
was the delight with which he used to hear of new 


x1] OF EVOLUTION 147 


discoveries in palaeontology, that I often recall our 
conversations in these later days, when so many in- 
teresting forms of extinct animal and vegetable life— 
veritable ‘missing links ’—are being discovered in all 
parts of the globe, and wish that he could have known 
of them. ‘They are indeed ‘Facts for Darwin.’ 

Very happy indeed was Charles Darwin in the last | 
years of his useful life, in returning to his oldest ‘love’ 
—geology. In studying the action of earthworms he 
found a geological study in which his rare powers of 
ingenious experimentation could be employed with 
profit. His earliest published memoir had dealt with 
the question, and for more than forty years with 
dogged perseverance, he had laboured at it from time 
to time. It was delightful to watch his pleasure as 
he examined what was going on in the flower-pots 
full of mould in his study, and when his book was 
published and favourably received, he rejoiced in 
it as ‘the child of his old age**’ 

Charles Darwin’s death took place rather more 
than twenty-two years after the publication of the 
Origin of Species. Before he passed away, he had 
the satisfaction of knowing that the doctrine of evolu- 
tion had come to be—mainly through his own great 
efforts—the accepted creed of all naturalists and that 
even for the world at large it had lost its imaginary 
terrors. As Huxley wrote a few days after our sad 
loss, ‘None have fought better, and none have been 

10—2 


1448 THE COMING OF EVOLUTION [cuH. x1 


more fortunate, than Charles Darwin. He found a 
great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and 
ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to 
see it, chiefly by his own efforts, irrefragably esta- 
blished in science, inseparably incorporated with the 
common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared 
by those who would revile, but dare not. What shall 
a man desire more than this’® ?’ 

More than a quarter of a century has passed since 
these words were written. How during that period 
the influence of Darwin’s writings on human thought 
has grown, in an accelerated ratio, will be seen by 
anyone who will turn the pages of the memorial 
volume—Darwin and Modern Sctence—published 
fifty years after the Oregin of Species. Therein, not 
only zoologists, botanists and geologists, but physicists, 
chemists, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, 
philologists, historians—and even politicians and theo- 
logians—are found testifying to the important part 
which Darwin’s great work has played, in revolution- 
ising ideas and moulding thought in connexion with 
all branches of knowledge and speculation. 


CHAPTER XII 
THE PLACE OF LYELL AND DARWIN IN HISTORY 


From the account given in the foregoing pages, 
it will be seen that—without detracting from the 
merits of their predecessors or the value of the 
labours of their contemporaries—we must ascribe 
the work of establishing on a firm foundation of 
observation and reasoning the doctrine of evolution 
—both in the inorganic and the organic world—to 
the investigations and writings of Lyell and Darwin. 

Lyell had to oppose the geologists of his day, who 
led by Buckland in this country and by Cuvier 
on the continent, were almost, without exception, 
hopelessly wedded to the doctrines of ‘Catastrophism,’ 
and bitterly antagonistic to all ideas savouring of con- 
tinuity or evolution. And, in the same way, Darwin, 
at the outset, found himself face to face with a 
similarly hostile attitude, on the part of biologists, 
with respect to the mode of appearance of new 
species of plants and animals. 

While Darwin doubtless derived his inspiration, 


150 THE COMING [ CH. 


and much valuable aid, from the Principles of 
Geology, and its gifted author, yet Lyell, with all his 
clearness of vision, logical faculty and literary skill, 
did not possess the strong faith and resolute cour- 
age—to say nothing of that wonderful tenacity of 
purpose and power of research which were such 
striking characteristics of Darwin—which would have 
enabled him to do for the organic what he did for 
the inorganic world. If it be true, as Darwin used 
to suggest, that the Origin of Species might never 
have been written had not Lyell first produced the 
Principles of Geology, I believe it is no less certain 
that the crowning of Lyell’s great edifice, by the 
full application of his principles to the world of living 
beings, could only have been accomplished by a man 
possessing, in unique combination, the powers of 
observation, experiment, reasoning and criticism, 
joined to unswerving determination, which distin- 
guished Darwin. 

Starting from Lyell’s most advanced post, Darwin 
boldly advanced into regions in which his friend was 
unable to lead, and indeed long hesitated to follow. 
Together, for nearly forty years, the two men— 
influencing one another ‘as iron sharpeneth iron ’— 
thought and communed and worked, aided at all 
times by the wide knowledge and judicious criticism 
of the sagacious Hooker; and together the fame of 
these men will go down to posterity. 


x11] OF EVOLUTION 151 


There is a tendency, when a great man has passed. 
from our midst, to estimate his merits and labours 
with undiscriminating, and often perhaps exaggerated, 
admiration; and this excessive praise is too often 
followed by a reaction, as the result of which the 
idol of one generation becomes almost commonplace 
to the next. A still further period is required before 
the proper position of mental perspective is reached 
by us, and a just judgment can be formed of the 
man’s real place in history. The reputations of both 
Lyell and Darwin have, I think, passed through both 
these two earlier phases of thought, and we may have 
arrived at the third stage. 

There was one respect in which both Lyell and 
Darwin failed to satisfy many both of their con- 
temporaries and successors. Lyell, like Hutton, 
always deprecated attempts to go back to a ‘beginning,’ 
while Darwin, who strongly supported Lyell in his 
geological views, was equally averse to speculations 
concerning the ‘origin of life on the globe.’ Scrope?, 
and also Huxley*’ in his earlier days, held the 
opinion that it was legitimate to assume or imagine a 
beginning, from which, with ever diminishing energy, 
the existing ‘comparatively quiet conditions, thought 
to characterise the present order of the world, would 
be reached. Both Lyell and Darwin insisted that 
geology is a historical science, and must be treated 
as such quite distinct from Cosmogony. And in the 


152 THE COMING [on. 


end, Huxley accepted the same view™*®. ‘Geology, he 
asserted, ‘is asmuch ahistorical science as archaeology.’ 

The sober historian has always had to contend 
against the traditional belief that ‘there were giants 
on the earth in those days!’ The love of the 
marvellous has always led to the ascription of past 
events to the work of demigods who were not of like 
powers and passions with ourselves. Hence the 
invention of those ‘catastrophies’—in which the 
reputations of deities as well as of men and women 
have often suffered. It is the same tendency in the 
human mind which makes it so difficult to conceive 
of all the changes in the earth’s surface-features and 
its inhabitants being due to similar operations to 
those still going on around us. 

Lyell’s views have constantly been misrepresented 
by the belief being ascribed to him that ‘the forces 
operating on the globe have never acted with greater 
intensity than at the present day.’ But his real 
position in this matter was a frankly ‘agnostic’ one. 
_ ‘Bring me evidence,’ he would have said, ‘that 
changes have taken place on the globe, which cannot 
be accounted for by agencies still at work when 
operating through sufficcently long periods of time, 
and I will abandon my position.’ But such evidence 
was not forthcoming in his day, and I do not think 
has ever been discovered since. Professor Sollas has 
very justly said, ‘Geology has no need to return to the 


X11] OF EVOLUTION 153 


catastrophism of its youth ; in becoming evolutional it 
does not cease to remain essentially uniformitarian!®, 

Alfred Russel Wallace, who has always been as 
stout a defender of the views of Lyell as he has of 
those of Darwin, has given me his permission to quote 
from a letter he wrote me in 1888. After referring 
to what he regards as the weak and mistaken attacks 
on Lyell’s teachings, ‘which have of late years been 
so general among geologists, he says :— 


‘I have always been surprised when men have advanced the 
view that volcanic action must have been greater when the earth 
was hotter, and entirely ignore the numerous indications that 
both subterranean and meteorological forces, even in Palaeozoic 
times, were of the same order of magnitude as they are now—and 
this I have always believed is what Lyell’s teaching implies,’ 


I believe that Mr Wallace’s expression, adopted 
from the mathematicians, ‘the same order of magni- 
tude,’ would have met with Lyell’s complete ac- 
quiescence. He was not so unwise as to suppose 
that, in the limited periods of human history, we 
must necessarily have had experience—even at 
Krakatoa or ‘Skaptar Jokull’—of nature’s greatest 
possible convulsions, but he fought tenaciously 
against any admission of ‘cataclysms’ that would 
belong to a totally different category to those of the 
present day. 

Apart from theological objections, the most for-; 
midable obstacle to the reception of evolutionary 


154 THE COMING [cu 


ideas had always been the prejudice against the admis- 
sion of vast duration of past geological time. It was 
unfortunate that, even when rational historical criti- 
cism had to a great extent neutralised the effect of 
Archbishop Usher’s chronology, the mathematicians 
and physicists, assuming certain sources of heat in 
the earth and sun could have been the only possible 
ones, tried to set a limit to the time at the disposal 
of the geologist and biologist. Happily the discovery 
of radio-activity and the new sources of heat opened 
up by that discovery, have removed those objections, 
which were like a nightmare to both Geology and- 
Biology. 

Lyell used to relate the story of a man, who, from 
a condition of dire poverty, suddenly became the 
possessor of vast wealth, and when remonstrated 
with by friends on the inadequacy of a subscription 
he had offered, the poor fellow exclaimed sadly, ‘Ah! 
you don’t know how hard it is to get the chill of 
poverty out of one’s bones.’ 

Geologists and biologists alike have long been the 
victims of this ‘chill of poverty, with respect to past 
time. So long as physicists insisted that one hundred 
millions, or forty millions, or even ten millions of 
years, must be the limit of geological time, it was not 
possible to avoid the conclusion stated by Lord 
Salisbury in 1894, ‘Of course, if the mathematicians 
are right the biologists cannot have what they de- 


xt] OF EVOLUTION 155 


mand’ But now geologists and biologists may 
alike feel that the liberty with respect to space, 
which is granted ungrudgingly to the astronomer, is 
no longer withheld from them in regard to time. We 
can say with old Lamarck :— 

‘For Nature, Time is nothing. It is never a difficulty, she 
always has it at her disposal; and it is for her the means by which 
she has accomplished the greatest as well as the least results. 


For all the evolution of the earth and of living beings, Nature 
needs but three elements—Space, Time and Matter!) 


Darwin, equally with Lyell, has suffered from a 
reaction following on extravagant and uninformed 
praise of his work. The fields in which he laboured 
single-handed, have yielded to hundreds of workers 
in many lands an abundant harvest. New doctrines 
and improved methods of enquiry have arisen— 
Mutationism, Mendelism, Weismannism, Neo-Lam- 
arckism, Biometrics, Eugenics and what not—are 
being diligently exploited. But all of these vigorous 
growths have their real roots in Darwinism. If we 
study Darwin’s correspondence, and the successive 
essays in which he embodied his views at different 
periods, we shall find, variation by mutation (or per 
saltum), the influence of environment, the question of 
the inheritance of acquired characters and similar 
problems were constantly present to Darwin’s ever 
open mind, his views upon them changing from time 
to time, as fresh facts were gathered. 


156 THE COMING [CH. 


No one could sympathise more fully than would 
Darwin, were he still with us, in these various depar- 
tures. He was compelled, from want of evidence, 
to regard variations as spontaneous, but would have 
heartily welcomed every attempt to discover the laws 
which govern them; and equally would he have 
delighted in researches directed to the investigation 
of the determining factors, controlling conditions and 
limits of inheritance. The man who so carefully 
counted and weighed his seeds in botanical experi- 
ments, could not but rejoicein the refined mathematical 
methods now being applied to biological problems. 

Let us not ‘in looking at the trees, lose sight of 
the wood. Underlying all the problems, some of 
them very hotly discussed at the present day, there 
is the great central principle of Natural Selection 
—which if not the sole factor in evolution, is un- 
doubtedly a very important and potent one. It is 
only necessary to compare the present position of 
the Natural History sciences with that which existed 
immediately before the publication of the Origin of 
Species, to realise the greatness of Darwin’s achieve- 
ment. 

The fame of both Lyell and Darwin will endure, 
and their names will remain as closely linked as were 
the two men in their lives, the two devoted friends, 
whose remains found a meet resting-place, almost 
side by side, in the Abbey of Westminster. Very 


xt] OF EVOLUTION 157 


touching indeed was it to witness the marks of 
affection between these two great men; an affection 
which remained undiminished to the end. Lyell was 
twelve years senior to Darwin, and died seven years 
before his friend. During the last year of Lyell’s 
life, I spent the summer with him at his home in 
Forfarshire. How well do I recollect the keenness 
with which—in spite of a near-sightedness that had 
increased with age almost to blindness—he still 
devoted himself to geological work. The 264 note- 
books, all carefully indexed, were in constant use, 
and visits were made to all the haunts of his youth, 
with the frequent pathetic appeal to me, ‘You must 
lend me your eyes.’ In spite of age and weakness, 
he would insist on clambering up the steepest hills 
to show me where he had found glacial markings, 
and would eagerly listen to my report on them. But 
the great delight of those days was the arrival of 
a letter from Darwin! Lyell was the recipient of 
many honours, and he declined many more, when he 
feared that they might interfere with the work to 
which he had devoted his life, but the distinction he 
prized most of all was that conferred on him by his 
lifelong friend, who used to address him as ‘My dear 
old Master,’ and subscribe himself ‘Your affectionate 
pupil.’ 

During the seven years that elapsed after the 
death of Lyell, I saw Darwin from time to time, for 


158 THE COMING [CH. 


he loved to hear ‘what was doing’ in his ‘favourite 
science. On board the Beagle, before he had met 
the man whose life and work were to be so closely 
linked with his own, he was in the habit of specially 
treasuring up any ‘facts that would interest Mr Lyell’; 
in middle life he declared that ‘when seeing a thing 
never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through 
his eyes’”’; and never, I think, did we meet after 
the friend was gone, without the oft repeated query, 
‘What would Lyell have said to that ?’ 

These reminiscences of the past, in which I have 
ventured to indulge, may not inappropriately conclude 
with a reference to the last interview I was privileged 
to have with him, who was ‘the noblest Roman of 
them all!’ On the occasion of his last visit to 
London, in December, 1881, Charles Darwin wrote 
asking me to take lunch with him at his daughter’s 
house, and to have ‘a little talk’ on geology. Greatly 
was I surprised at the vigour which he showed on 
that afternoon, for, contrary to his usual practice, he 
did not interrupt the conversation to retire and rest 
for a time, though I suggested the desirability of his 
doing so, and offered to stay. His brightness and 
animation, which were perhaps a little forced, struck 
me as so unusual that I laughingly suggested that he 
was ‘renewing his youth.’ Then a slight shade passed 
over his countenance—but only for a moment—as he 
told me that he had ‘received his warning. The 


x11] OF EVOLUTION 159 


attack, to which his son has alluded, as being the 
prelude to the end’, had occurred during this visit 
to town; and he intimated to me that he knew his 
heart was seriously affected. Never shall I forget 
how, seeing my concern, he insisted on accompanying 
me to the door, and how, with the ever kindly smile 
on his countenance, he held my hand in a prolonged 
grasp, that I sadly felt might perhaps be the last. 
And so it proved. 

And now all the world is united in the conviction 
which Darwin so modestly expressed concerning his 
own career, ‘I believe that I have acted rightly in 
steadily following and devoting myself to science !’ 

For has not that devotion resulted in a complete 
reform of the Natural-History Sciences ! The doctrine 
of the ‘immutability of species ’—like that of ‘ Catas- 
trophism’ in the inorganic world—has been eliminated 
from the Biological sciences by Darwin, through his 
steadily following the clues found by him during his 
South American travels; and continuity is now as 
much the accepted creed of botanists and zoologists 
as it is of geologists. As a result of the labours of 
Darwin, new lines of thought have been opened out, 
fresh fields of investigation discovered, and the 
infinite variety among living things has acquired 
a grander aspect and a special significance. Very 
justly, then, has Darwin been universally acclaimed 
as ‘the Newton of Natural History.’ 


NOTES 


In the following references, L.L.L. indicates the “ Life and Letters 
of Sir Charles Lyell’? by Mrs K. Lyell (1881), D.L.L. the ‘‘ Life and 
Letters of Charles Darwin” by F. Darwin (1887), M.L.D. ‘‘More 
Letters of Charles Darwin” edited by F. Darwin and A. C. Seward 
(1903), and H.C.H. Huxley’s ‘Collected Essays.” 


1. The Darwin-Wallace Celebration, Linn. Soc. (1908), p. 10. 
2. Darwin and Modern Science (1909), pp. 152-170. 
3. Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. rt. lines 111-2. 
4. Genesis, Chap. xxx. verses 31-43. 
5. Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1900 (Bradford), pp. 916-920. 
6. Ibid. 1909 (Winnipeg), pp. 491-493. 
7 L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 468. 
8. Origin of Species, Chap. xv. end. 
9. Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. vir. lines 454-466. 
10. Edinb. Rev. uxrx. (July 1839), pp. 446-465. 
11. Principles of Geology, Vol. 1. (1830), p. 61. 
12. Zittel, Hist. of Geol. &c. Eng. transl. p. 72. 
13. Quart. Rev. Vol. xuvim. (March 1832), p. 126. 
14. Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1866 (Nottingham). 
15. H.C.E. Vol. vii. p. 315. 
16. Ibid. p. 190. 
17. D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 179-204, 
18. H.C.H. Vol. v. p. 101. 
19. D.U.L, Vol. 1m. p. 190. . 
20. Edinb. Rev. Vol. ux1x. (July 1839), p. 455 note. 
21. ‘ Theory of the Harth,’ Vol. 1. p. 67. 
22. L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 272. 
23. Brit. Assoc, Rep. 1833 (Cambridge), pp. 365-414. 
24. Outlines of the Geology of England and Waies, p. xliv. 


NOTES 16] 


Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, p. iii. 

Edinb, Rev. ux1x. (July 1839), p. 455 note. 

Ibid, 

Zittel, Hist. of Geol. &c. Eng. transl. p. 141. 

Considerations on Volcanoes, &c. (1825), pp. iv—vi. 

Volcanoes of Central France, 2nd Ed. (1858), p. vii. 

See Quart. Rev. Vol. xxxvi. (Oct. 1827), pp. 437-485. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 46. 

Principles of Geology, Vol. 1. 2nd Ed. 

L.L.L. Vol. 11. pp. 47-8. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 268. 

Environs de Paris (1811), p. 56. 

Trans. Geol. Soc. 2nd Ser. Vol. 1. pp. 73-96. 

See Mantell’s Geology of the Isle of Wight and L.L.L. Vol. 1. 
pp. 114-122. 

Hist. of Geol. &c. Eng. transl. p. 188. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 173. 

British Critic and Theological Review (1830), p. 7 of the review. 

Die Volet p.Lti. 

Preface to Vol. 111. of the ‘ Principles’ (1833), p. vii. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 233-4. 

Charles Lyell and Modern Geology (1898), p. 214. 

Proc. Geol. Soc. Vol. 1. p. 374. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 196. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 197. 

Proc. Geol. Soc. Vol. 1. pp. 145-9. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 253. 

Ibid, Vol. 1. p. 234. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 271. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 270. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 271. 

Quart. Rev. Vol. xu. (Oct. 1830), pp. 411-469 and Vol. mmr. 
(Sept. 1835), pp. 406-448. Both these reviews are by Scrope. 
The Review of the 2nd Vol. of the ‘Principles,’ Q.R. 
Vol. xtvi1. (March 1832), pp. 103-132 is by Whewell. 


J. E. ll 


NOTES 


L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 270. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. pp. 260-1. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 314. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 165. 

M.L.D. Vol. 1. p. 232 and D.L.L. Vol. 11. p. 190. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 316-7. 

Proc. Geol. Soc. Vol. 1. pp. 302-3. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 41. 

See also D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 72-3. 

Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1895, and Controverted Questions in 
Geology (1895), pp. 1-18. 

M.L.D. Vol. 11. p. 117. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 337-8 and p. 342. 

Origin of Species, Chap. x. See also Darwin and Modern Science, 
pp. 337-385. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 341-2. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 44. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 296. 

Ibid. p. 72. 

Ibid. p. 71. 

A. R. Wallace, ‘My Life, &c.’ (1905), Vol. 1. p. 433. 

The Darwin- Wallace Celebration, Linn. Soc. (1908), p. 118. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 459. 

Report of lecture at Forrester’s Hall. 

H.C.E. Vol. vir. p. 312. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 190. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 2, 3. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 36. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 5. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 94. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 417-8. 

H. F. Osborn, ‘ From the Greeks to Darwin’ (1894), p. 165. 

Loc. cit. pp. 467-469. 

L.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 168. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 365. 


NOTES 163 


D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 23, 29, 39. 

Ibid. Vol. 111. p. 15 (see also pp. 11-14). 
‘Origin of Species,’ 6th Ed. (1875), p. xiv. 
‘Darwin and Modern Science,’ p. 125. 
‘Origin of Species,’ 6th Ed. (1875), pp. xvi, xvii. 
M.L.D. Vol. 1. p. 3. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 41. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 41. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 52. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 58. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 58. 

H.C.E. Vol. 1. p. 271. 

D.D.GAVolL rp. 73; 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 263. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 38. 

H.C.E. Vol. 11. p. 20. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 275. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 83. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. pp. 5-10. 

H.C.E,. Vol. 1. p. 71. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 47. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 84. 

Macmillan’s Magazine, Feb, 1888, p. 241. 
My Life, &c. Vol. 1. p. 355. 
Darwin-Wallace Celebration, Linn. Soc. (1908), pp. 6-7. 
Ibid. pp. 14-16. 


- D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 116-7. 


‘Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection’ (1871), 
Preface, pp. iv, v. 

Darwin-Wallace Celebration, Linn. Soc. (1908), p. 7. 

Ibid. p. 7. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 66. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. pp. 62-3. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 66. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 66, 


164 


123. 
124. 
125. 
126. 


127. 
128. 
129. 
130. 
131. 
132. 
133. 
134. 
135. 
136. 
137. 
138. 
139. 
140. 
141. 
142. 
143, 
144. 
145. 
146. 
147. 
148. 
149. 
150. 
151. 
152. 
153. 


NOTES 


D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 83. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 84. 

‘The Foundations of the Origin of Species ’ (1909), p. xv. 

Letter to A. R. Wallace, Christ’s Coll, Mag. Vol. xxim. (1909), 
p. 229. 

D.L.L. Vol. mu. pp. 16-18. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 347. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 19-21. 

Huxley’s Life and Letters (1900), Vol. 1. p. 94. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 83. 

Science Progress, Vol. m1. (1908), pp. 537-542. 

D.L.L. Vol. 11. p. 160. 

H.C.E. Vol. 11. pp. 227-248. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. pp. 179-204. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 255. 

The Review is republished in H.C.E. Vol. 1. pp. 1-21. 

Huxley’s Life and Letters, Vol. 1. pp. 179-189. 

D.L.L. Vol. 11. p. 185. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 93. 

See Haeckel’s ‘ History of Creation.’ 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 71. 

Ibid. Vol. 1. p. 72. 

D.L.L. Vol. 1. p. 98; Vol. m1. pp. 217-218. 

H.C.E. Vol. 11. p. 247. 

Quart. Rev. xu. pp. 464-467 and Vol. tim. pp. 446-448. 

H.C.E. Vol. vu. p. 315. 

H.C.E. Vol. v. p. 99. 

The Age of the Earth and other Geological Studies, p. 322, 

Brit. Assoc. Rep. 1894 (Oxford), p. 13, 

‘Hydrogéologie,’ p. 67. 

M.L.D. Vol. 1. p. 117. 

D.L.L. Vol. 111, p. 356. 


INDEX 


Adaptation, in relation to diver- 
gence of species, Darwin’s re- 
cognition of, 108, 109 

Agriculturalists, ideas of creation, 
5, 6 

Arnoup, MatrHew, on Lucretius 
and Darwin, 3, 4 

Auvergne, N. Desmarest on, 17; 
Scrope on, 35; visited by Lyell 
and Murchison, 56, 57; their 
memoir on, 58 


‘Beagle,’ H.M.S., Darwin’s voy- 
age in, 98, 99; narrative of, 
106 

Bonney, T.G., estimate of amount 
of Lyell’s travels by, 56, 57 

Botanical works of Darwin, 141 

British Critic, Whewell’s review 
of Lyell in, 53 

Broperip, W. J., aid given to 
Lyell by, 65; Vol. um. of 
Principles dedicated to, 65 

Brown, Rosert, assistance to 
Lyell by, 47 

Bucxianp, Dr, on infant Geo- 
logical Society, 26; champion 
of ‘Catastrophism’ in Eng- 
land, 27 ; his eccentricity, 42- 
44; ‘ Equestrian Geology’ of, 
28 ; influence on Lyell, 34, 44; 
2nd edition of Vol. 1. of Prin- 
ciples dedicated to, 44; his 
opposition to Lyell, 71 


Cambridge, Darwin at, 97, 98 

CaNDOLLE, A. P. pz, on struggle 
for existence, 107 

Catastrophism, origin of idea of, 
14, 15; defined, 22; origin of 
term, 22; connexion with or- 
thodoxy, 21; championed by 
Buckland, Sedgwick &c., 27; 
by Cuvier, 31, 50, 102; oppo- 
sition by Lyell and Darwin to, 
105 

Centres of Creation, Lyell’s views 
on, 65 

CuamBEeRS, Ropert, publishes 
Vestiges of Creation, 92; his 
reasons for anonymity, 93 

Chemists, part played in early 
days of Geological Society by, 
26 


Christ’s College, Cambridge, the 
home of Milton and Darwin, 
13; of Paley, 108 

Cuopp, E., his Pioneers of Evo- 
lution, 16 

Continuity, term for Evolution 
suggested by Grove, 23 

ConyBEARE, W. D., advocacy of 
Catastrophism, 27; criticism 
of Hutton, 28; misconception 
of Hutton, 29; on formation 
of Thames Valley, 58; friend- 
ship with Lyell, 69 

Creation, legends of, 5-7; use 
of term by Lyell and Darwin, 


1ll—3 


166 


11; contrast of their views 
with those of Milton, 12, 13 
Criticisms of the Principles of 

Geology, 68, 69, 70, 71; of the 

Origin of Species, 132-139 
Cuvier, his strong support of 

Catastrophism, 31, 46, 50, 102 


Darwin, CuHariEs, nobility of 
character, 3; his use of term 
‘Creation,’ 11; on grandeur 
of idea of Evolution, 12; his 
devotion to Lyell and the Prin- 
ciples of Geology, 63, 73-75, 
78; his horror of slavery, 76; 
opposition to Catastrophism, 
77; opinion of lLamarck’s 
works, 90, 91 : on the Vestiges 
of Creation, 94; his dislike for 
speculation, 101; his optimism 
and courage, 77; his birth and 
education, 95,96; life at Edin- 
burgh, 97; at Cambridge, 97, 
98; voyage in the ‘Beagle,’ 
99,100; first awakening to the 
idea of Evolution, 102, 104; 
work with Lyell at Geological 
Society, 105; begins ‘ species 
work,’ 106; influence of Mal- 
thus’s work on, 107; inter- 
course with Wallace, 113; 
action in respect to theory, 
128, 129; his first literary 
ambitions, 116; difficulties of 
work caused by ill-health, 117, 
118, 119; his loss of apprecia- 
tion for music and literature, 
and its cause, 134, 135; later 
writings on Evolution, 141, 
144; his declining years, 147, 
158, 159; his death, 147; pre- 
sent position of his theory of 


INDEX 


Natural Selection, 
159 

Darwin, Erasmus, his indepen- 
dent conception of Lamarck- 
ism, 91, 92; absence cf in- 
fluence on his grandson, 95, 
101 

Darwin, Erasmus (the younger), 
advice given to Charles on pub- 
lication, 122 

Darwin, Francis, edited Life and 
Letters &c., 121; extracts from 
C.D.’s note-books &e., and 
Foundations of the Origin of 
Species, 123; on his father’s 
health, 118 

Darwin, Mrs, her care of her 
husband’s health, 118; read 
proofs of Origin of Species, 132 

Davzeny, C. G. B., assists Lyell 
in his researches, 47 

De wa Becue, H., his attitude 
with respect to evolution, 71 

Desnayes, G. B., assists Lyell in 
conchological work, 66 

Desmarest, N., work in Auvergne, 
17; evolutionary views of, 17, 
20 


155, 156, 


EKarthworms, Darwin’s work on, 
147 

Edinburgh, Darwin’s life at, 97; 
Wernerian Society at, founded 
by Jameson, 21, 25 

Kgypt, idea of inorganic evolu- 
tion originated in, 15 

Entomology, influence of, on 
Lyell, 42, 57; on Darwin, 96; 
on Wallace, 110 

‘Equestrian Geology,’ popularity 
of, at Oxford, 27; at Cambridge, 
28 


INDEX 


Evolution, in organic and in- 
organic world, 14; how ideas 
originated, 15-16, 82, 83; 
revolution effected by, 1, 32, 
159; causes of opposition to, 
20, 21, 155; opposition of 
Sedgwick and Whewell, 83; 
support of Herschel, 83 

Euclid, influence on Darwin, 108 


Farapay, M., assistance given to 
Lyell by, 47 

Firton, Dr, on supposed in- 
debtedness of Hutton to Gene- 
relli, 18; andof Lyellto Hutton, 
18; on causes of Hutton’s 
failure to reform geology, 23, 
25; his attitude towards Lyell’s 
views, 30, 71 

Fluvialists, 58 

Forsers, Davin, intercourse with 
Darwin, 119 

Fossil bones, discovery of, in 
South America first suggests 
to Darwin mutability of species, 
102 

Foundations of the 
Species, 123 

Frazer, J. G., on legends of 
creation, 5, 7 


Origin of 


Galapagos Islands, influence of 
study of fauna on Darwin, 104 

GENERELLI, advocacy of Evolu- 
tion, 17, 20 

Geographical distribution, Lyell 
on, 65; Wallace on, 146 

Geological Society, foundation of, 
25; early history, 26; con- 
nexion of Lyell with, 44, 71: 
of Darwin, 100, 105: of Scrope, 
50; discussions on rival doc- 


167 


trines at, 24, 25, 29, 30, 60, 76, 
77, 105 

Geology, Darwin’s interest in, 
96, 99, 124, 147, 158 

Grppon, his influence on Lyell, 
52, 67 

GrerenoucH, G. B., founds Geo- 
logical Society and first Presi- 
dent, 26; his strong support of 
Wernerianism, 26, 29 

Grove, R., suggests term ‘ Con- 
tinuity,’ 23 

GintuerR, Dr, his estimate of 
number of species of animals, 
10 


Harcxen, E., credits Lyell with 
early conviction of Evolution, 
84 

Henstow, J. 8., friendship for 
and help of Darwin, 97, 98, 99 ; 
opposition to Evolution, 27, 
72 


Heredity, early recognition of im- 
portance, 9 

HerscuHet., J., belief in Evolution, 
12, 71; correspondence with 
Lyell, 83, 85, 183 

Horr, C. von, influence of his 
works on Lyell, 49 

Hooker, J. D., friendship with 
Lyell’s father, 126 ; voyage to 
Antarctic with Ross, 126; in- 
troduction to Darwin, 126; 
correspondence with, 127; as- 
sistance to Darwin, 126; advice 
to, 129; on origin of Australian 
flora, 139; friendship with 
Lyell, 79, 126 

Horton, his Theory of the Earth, 
17,18, 19, 20; rarity of the book, 
30; small influence of, 21 ; sup- 


168 


posed infidelity and persecution 
of, 21, 22, 25, 69; Lyell’s mis- 
taken views on, 54; difference 
of his theory from Lyell’s, 53 

Houxtey, T. H., early views on 
distinction of Uniformitarian- 
ism and Evolution, 23; later 
view of identity, 23, 24; in- 
fluence of Darwin on, 24, 127, 
144; on Ist edition of Prin- 
ciples, 67, 80, 81; argues for 
Lyell’s belief in Evolution, 84 ; 
reviews Origin of Species, 136, 
137; reply to Bishop of Oxford, 
138; defence of Darwinism, 
140; on Darwin’s death, 147, 
148; on Lyell’s death, 80 

Hybridity, Lyell’s discussion on, 
65, 103 

Hypotheses of Creation, twofold 
character of, 5-8 


Ideas v. Actions, Wallace on, 4 

Independent discovery of Natural 
Selection by Wallace, 113; 
Darwin’s letter on, 113 

Italian geologists, their antici- 
pation of evolutionary ideas, 17 


Jacos, his frauds based on ideas 
of heredity and variation, 9 
JAMESON, R., founds Wernerian 
Society 1807, 25; influence on 
Darwin, 97 

Journal of Researches, by Darwin, 
106 ; dedicated to Lyell, 72 


King’s College, London, Lyell 
professor at, 65, 66 

Kinnordy, Lyell at, 42, 43, 46 

Kirwan, De Luc, and WILuIAMs, 
opposition to Hutton, 25 


INDEX 


Lamarck, his Hydrogéologie, 87; 
Philosophie Zoologique, 88; 
Lyell’s admiration of, 64, 89; 
criticism of theory, 64, 90; 
views of Darwin on, 90, 91; 
on geological time, 155 

Lectures by Lyell, 65, 66 

Linnean Society, papers of Dar- 
win and Wallace at, 112, 129, 
130 

Literature, Lyell and, 52, 67; 
Darwin and, 116, 117, 120; 
his loss of interest in, 134, 135 

Locxuart and Quarterly Review, 
60 

Lucretius, belief in Evolution, 
3, 4 

LyreLL, CHARLES, use of term 
‘Creation,’ 11; on grandeur of 
idea of Evolution, 12; birth 
and ancestry, 41; education, 
34, 42; influence of Buckland 
on, 34, 42-44; on Cuvier, 46; 
change of views not due to 
Hutton’s works, 45; but to 
travel and observation, 45; in 
Kast Anglia, 45; in Strath- 
more, 46,47; abandons career 
as barrister for geology, 48; 
work with Dr Mantell, 48; 
visits to Continent, 48; in- 
fluence of von Hoff’s works, 
49 ; of Scrope, 50; his remarks 
on Hutton’s supposed heresies, 
51, 54; influence of Gibbon on 
his literary style, 52; praise of 
Hutton and Playfair at later 
date, 53; review of Scrope’s 
book on Auvergne, 56; visit to 
Auvergne with Murchison, 56; 
advocacy of travel for geolo- 
gists, 56 ; journeys in Italy, 58; 


INDEX 


Lyell on Murchison, 57; Mur- 
chison on Lyell, 58; Lyell’s 
avoidance of controversy, 63; 
differences of opinion with 
Scrope, 62, 63; attention to 
literary style, 65; professor- 
ship at King’s College, London, 
65, 69; lectures, 66; contro- 
versies at Geological Society, 
71; aid of Darwin in discus- 
sions, 71; his friendship with 
Darwin, 73, 104, 105; his ex- 
treme caution, 75-77 ; candour 
in finally accepting Natural 
Selection, 77; opposition to 
his views, 83, 84; his belief in 
Evolution at an early date, 
81, 84-86; his anticipation of 
‘Mimicry,’ 85, 86; his action 
in Darwin-Wallace episode, 
113, 129; induces Darwin to 
commence writing his work, 
128; his attitude towards 
theory of Natural Selection, 
139, 140, 145; great infiuence 
of Lyell’s works on Darwin and 
Evolution, 150; misrepresen- 
tation of nis views, 152-154; 
his declining years, 157; last 
hours, 80; Hooker’s tribute to 
his memory, 79, 80 

LyreiyL, CHARLES (the elder), bot- 
anist and student of Dante, 41 ; 
intercourse with the Hookers, 
126 


Matrtuvus, On Population, influ- 
ence of work on Darwin, 107; 
on Wallace, 112 

Man, descent of, Darwin’s work 
on, 142, 144; Wallace’s views 
on, 144 


169 


Mantez1u, Lyell’s researches with, 
48 ; correspondence with, 55, 
89 


MarttHew, P., anticipation of 
theory of Natural Selection, 
92 

Mitton, description of creation, 
13; Darwin’s early love of 
his poetry, 134; at Christ’s 
College, Cambridge, 13 

Mimicry, doctrine of, Lyell’s 
early recognition of import- 
ance, 85, 86 

Modern Science, Darwin and, 148 

MuRCHISON, accompanies Lyell to 
Auvergne, 56; opinion of Lyell, 
57; Lyell’s opinion of, 57, 58; 
3rd Vol. of Principles dedicated 
to, 66; correspondence with, 59 

Morray, Joun, and Quarterly 
Review, 60; publishes Lyell’s 
works, 60; publishes Darwin’s 
works, 130; his reminiscences 
of Darwin, 132 

Music, Darwin’s loss of power to 
appreciate, and its cause, 134, 
135 


Natural Selection, theory of, de- 
fined by Huxley, 106; fore- 
stalled by Wells, Matthew &c., 
18, 19; first conception of by 
Darwin, 107; by Wallace, 112 

‘Neptunism’ or ‘ Wernerism’ 
and Catastrophism, 18 

Newton, Professor A., on vague 
hopes of solution of ‘ species 
question’ before Darwin, 94, 
109 


Origin of Species, first idea of, 
121; plan proposed to follow 


170 


Principles, 123; first sketch of 
1842, enlarged draft of 1844, 
commencement of great treatise 
on Evolution in 1856, inter- 
ruption by arrival of Wallace’s 
papers, 128, 129; the ‘Abstract’ 
or Origin of Species com- 
menced, 130; finished, 131; 
reception of, 132-139; influ- 
ence of, 1, 159 

Ossorn, H. F., his From the 
Greeks to Darwin, 16; on 
Lamarck, 87 


Patey, his influence on Darwin, 
108 


Puiuures, Joun, his attitude to- 
wards Lyell’s views, 30, 71 

Philosophers, on Evolution, 16, 
82 


Prayrarr, Joun, his Illustrations 
of the Huttonian Theory, 29; 
explains the causes of Hutton’s 
failure, 30 

‘Plutonism,’ ‘Vulcanism,’ or 
‘Huttonism,’ 18 

Poets and Evolution, 16 

Prestwich, Sir J., opposition to 
Lyell’s views, 72 

Prevost, Constant, aid to Lyell, 
50; opposition to Cuvier, 50 

PRIESTLEY, persecution of, 21, 69 

Principles of Geology, first idea 
of, 55; early draft sent to 
publisher in 1827, 56; with- 
drawn and rewritten in 1830, 
56; issue of first volume, 63; 
success, 64; review by Scrope, 
60-62; decision to confine 
Vol. 1. to Organic Evolution, 
65; 3rd volume, classification 
of Tertiaries and Metamorphic 


INDEX 


theory, 66; later editions, 66; 
Elements, Manualand Student’s 
elements, 67; success of work, 
67; Darwin’s opinion on, 67; 
of Huxley, 67, 80, 81 ; Wallace 
on, 79; criticisms of, 68, 69, 
70, 71 
PytHagoras, his 
ideas, 16 


evolutionary 


Quarterly Review, articles by 
Lyell, 56, 89; by Scrope, 60, 
62 


Reviews, of the Principles by 
Scrope, 56, 89; by Whewell, 22, 
53; of the Origin by Huxley, 
136, 137 


Socropzt, G. Pounzert, education, 
84; travels, 34; work in 
Auvergne, 35; in Italy, 35; 
delay in publishing, 35 ; work 
on volcanoes, 36; his just views 
on Evolution, 37-39 ; cause of 
want of recognition of his 
work, 39, 40 ; devotion to poli- 
tics, 40; reviews of Principles, 
41, 61; correspondence with 
and influence on Lyell, 50, 61; 
his differences of opinion from 
Lyell, 62, 63, 151; effects of his 
review, 64 

Srepewicrk, A., advocates Catas- 
trophism, 27, 28; opposition 
to Hutton, influence on Scrope, 
34; on Darwin, 98; opposition 
to Lyell, 83; weakening of op- 
position to, 58; on Principles, 
70, 71; dislike to Evolution, 
83 


INDEX 


Suretey, A. E., estimate of num- 
ber of species of animals, 10 
Slavery, views of Lyell and 
Darwin, 76 

Suita, W., influence of his teach- 
ing on Geological Society, 27 

Sonuas, W. J., on Evolution and 
Uniformitarianism, 152, 153 

Species, origin of idea of, 9; num- 
ber of species of animals, 10; 
of plants, 11 

Struggle for existence, Lyell on, 
103, 107 ; de Candolle on, 107 


Theory of the Earth, Hutton’s, 
17 ; Scrope’s, 36 

Tompson, G. P., see Scrope, 33 

Time geological, Lyell on, 154; 
Lamarck on, 155 

Touuet, Miss G., aids Darwin in 
revising Origin of Species, 132 


Uniformitarianism, origin of the 
term, 14, 15, 22 

Uniformity (or Continuity), 
Lyell’s real views on, 62, 63; 
misconceptions of his views 
on, 151, 152, 155 

University of London, Lyell’s 
connexion with, 59, 65 


Variation, early recognition of its 
importance, 9; Lyell’s discus- 
sion of, 64, 103; Darwin’s 
work on, 141 

Vestiges of Creation, influence of, 
93; Darwin on, 94; Wallace 
on, 110 

Vines, S. H., estimate of number 
of species of plants, 10 

Volcanoes, Scrope on, 36 

Vulcanism, see Plutonism &c.,18 


171 


Wautack, Atrrep Ruvsszn, on 
ideas and actions, 4; his early 
life, 110; in South America, 
110 ; in Malay Archipelago, 110; 
influence of Principles on, 79, 
110; speculations at Sarawak, 
111; influence of Malthus on, 
112; conception of idea of 
Natural Selection, 111, 112; 
ignorance of Darwin’s views, 
112; statement on his relation 
to Darwin, 113, 114; his mag- 
nanimity, 114; on geographical 
distribution of animals, 146; 
his defence of Lyell’s principle 
of Uniformity, 153 

Weuts, Dr, his anticipation of 
theory of Natural Selection, 
92 

WERNER, success of his teachings, 
21, 26, 27; his influence on 
early geologists, 26 

Wernerian Society, founded, 1807, 
by Jameson, 21, 25 

Wernerism, 18 

WHEWELL, Dr, contrast of doc- 
trines of Hutton and Lyell, 22, 
53; originates terms ‘Catas- 
trophism,’ ‘ Uniformitarian- 
ism,’ 22; and ‘ Geological 
Dynamics,’ 70; reviews Prin- 
ciples, 53; opposition to Evo- 
lution, 83 

World, small part known to 
ancients, 9 

Worms, Darwin’s work on, 147 


AittgeL, K. von, on Hutton’s work, 
19; on von Hoff and Lyell, 
50 


Zoonomia of Krasmus Darwin, 


101 


Cambrivge : 
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 








QH361 .J92 
The coming of evoiution; 


Princeton Theological Semin 


OV NA 





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